Quicken
by Luolang
Summary: The attack in the alley goes differently. Emma Barnes loses a part of herself in the process—and gains something else in exchange. Torn out of familiar surroundings, she's forced to navigate a world filled with violence and strife, where the line between right and wrong can be as thin as the edge of a sword...
1. Forge 1-1

**Forge 1.1**

They were stronger than me. My arms were splayed uselessly across the ground, held down by two of them on both sides of me. Another one was kneeling behind me, holding my head between their knees, keeping me from turning my head.

I looked up. It was a girl, barely older than me, with a nose ring and violet eye shadow. She was wearing my denim jacket, the one I wanted to show off to Taylor when she came back from camp.

Dad was still shouting. He couldn't have been more than several feet away, but he might as well as have been in a different state. I could barely focus on it through the white noise that had done a number on my mind, preventing me from putting my thoughts in order.

It was odd how calm I felt. My heart was rapidly beating against my chest and I was starved for air, but it almost as if it was happening to someone else, I a stranger in my own body. Would I wake up in my bed in a few minutes, all this just a bad nightmare?

I watched curiously as the thug with the bandanna approached. He straddled me, his weight pressing hard against my stomach and I ached from where they had kicked me earlier. He pushed his left hand down against my hair, keeping me still. His other hand held the knife, long and thin, and he pressed the flat of the blade against my nose.

The metal felt cool to the touch, even as hot sweat dripped down my brow, mixing with the tears I hadn't realized had begun to flow. Was that me who was crying?

"Nose," he whispered. He raised the knife and slowly moved it upwards. I closed my eyes, feeling the steel rest against my twitching eyelid.

"Eye..."

I re-opened my eyes as he moved the blade down, the flat tapping against my lips.

"Mouth..."

The knife looped around, brushing away the hair from my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him catch one of my earrings with the blade's point, lightly tugging at it.

"Well, you can hide the ears with the hair," he murmured. He pulled harder with the knife and my ear grew hot with pain. "So maybe I'll take both. Which will it be?"

I didn't understand what he was asking. I heard the words, but I didn't perceive the connection between them.

"Unh?" someone said.

He gently re-traced his path across my face with the knife. "One eye, the nose, the mouth, or both ears. Yan here thinks she has what it takes to be a _member_ , instead of a common whore, so you choose one of the above, and she goes to town on the part in question, proves her worth."

"Holy shit, Lao," the girl above me chortled. "That's fucked up."

I still felt detached. I couldn't process what was going on, I couldn't _rationalize_ it. It was like there was a glass screen separating me from my vision, a filter for my sensations, like a badly edited scene from a movie. There was no way this was real. I was still in the car, listening to Taylor talk about nature camp.

Things like this didn't happen to people like me. This wasn't me—it was someone else on the ground that was trapped, someone else whose dad was screaming their name, someone else that was crying as a knife was pressed against their face, someone else—

The thug pressed the flat of the knife hard against my cheek, the edges prickling against my skin. " _Pick_."

My thoughts skidded to a halt. I suddenly became painfully aware of the pressure of the blade and my vision cleared as I saw the face of the thug in the bandanna. I realized that I was hyperventilating, tears obscuring my vision as my heart felt as though it would burst out of my chest from how fast it was beating. I blinked away the tears as I searched fruitlessly for an answer, a way to make _sense_ of the nightmare that was happening.

I found it in front of me. There was a shadow on top of the car, behind the thugs. It wore a metal hockey mask and was dressed in a black costume that hugged against a feminine figure. She wore a hooded cape that fluttered lightly from the sea breeze. She said nothing, remaining perfectly still as she calmly observed things unfold.

Her eyes were locked with mine. Why wasn't she doing anything? Why was she just _sitting_ there?

Lao, the man with the bandanna, handed the knife to the girl holding my head between her knees. "Don't worry, ginger, just a little cut and we'll let you go."

The girl tossed the knife from hand to hand before she lowered the point down just above my eyebrow, gently tugging down at my eyelid. I stopped breathing, a horrible anticipation bubbling up inside me.

"Pick," the girl said. "No, wait…"

She took the hair she had cut off from me earlier. She shoved it against my open mouth. "Eat it, _then_ pick."

The shadow still hadn't done anything. She kept staring at me, as though she were looking _through_ me. Judging me, weighing my worth. I wanted to shout out, to tell her to do something, but my breath was caught in my throat. I was unable to do anything besides blubbering softly.

The girl began to tap the flat of the blade against my forehead. " _Pick_ already or I'll pick for you. Maybe I'll cut them _all_ off if you don't choose; then you won't be such a pretty ginger bitch anymore."

The cape continued staring at me, saying nothing, doing nothing. Why? Why did she continue just sitting there? Was she waiting on me to do something, to start a fight trapped like I was?

The tapping grew more insistent now. "Are you deaf or something? _Choose_ already."

Go forward? Go backward? I was trapped, stuck between the cruel faces of the monsters that held me down and the gaze of the silent cape that did nothing but watch me. I felt something desperate bubbling out from my chest and my entire body began badly shaking.

"Fuck it," the girl spat. "I'll start with your mouth—"

"N-n-no," I stammered, somehow managing to speak. "I'll— I'll pick."

"Then _eat_ ," the girl insisted, pressing the hair against my mouth. "Now."

I looked helplessly at the cape, willing her to do something, _anything_. Why wasn't she doing anything? What kind of hero just watched this happen?

"Eat!" the girl demanded again, the knife coming to rest against my cheek again. I opened my mouth and let the hair fall inside my mouth. I tried to swallow but I almost spat it out instead.

" _Swallow_ ," the girl with the eye shadow said insistently. I gulped, resisting my gag reflex as the hair went down my throat, the awful taste making me want to vomit it back out.

She waved the knife again. "Pick now. I'm done waiting."

I stared once last time at the cape, as I tried to communicate my intent to her with my eyes. Just do something, save me, help me!

The girl twirled the knife, growing more impatient by the moment. Still the cape did nothing but continue to stare at me.

The defeat washed over me. I cringed and made my decision.

"Th-the nose."

Light glinted off the blade as the girl lowered the knife, her face contorted into a cruel smile. She grabbed roughly at my hair, tugging my head off the ground as she braced her knees against my shoulders for leverage. My neck was badly strained, but I could see the cape more clearly now, just as still and silent since she had first arrived.

I was about to lose a part of myself forever, literally cut off my face. I couldn't be a model anymore— who would want a nose-less girl to pose for them? Every time I would stare in the mirror from now on, I would always have a reminder of this nightmare.

I felt a part of me withering then, something I would never recover, a wound that I knew would hurt more deeply than what this girl was about to do. My mind drifted to Taylor, of all people. Taylor had, in her way, been put to the knife, had had an irreplaceable part of herself carved away. Not a nose, but a mother. A light within her had gone forever and she was no longer the same person.

I remembered when she had gotten the news. She had been so upset that she had cried herself to sleep for an entire week, not once getting out of bed. I remembered sitting with her and talking with her then, how she had retreated into herself, a pale shadow of the person she had been before. Was that going to happen to me? Was I going to become like Taylor?

I wasn't even strong enough to fight back here. And I wouldn't be strong enough to ever move past this.

The knife rested just under my nose, the flat pressed against my lips. I began trembling violently, but the girl bore her weight down on my shoulders.

"Stay still, this won't take long."

I kept staring at the cape, hoping, praying for her to finally start doing something. The knife just laid against beneath my nose. The girl hadn't done anything yet, nothing had happened yet.

This was the moment I would wake up, right? Like those nightmares that wake you up in the middle of the night. Things like this didn't happen in the real world. In the real world, girls my age didn't go around mutilating people just to enter a gang. In the real world, a cape wouldn't just sit there and watch this happen. In the real world, Emma Barnes wasn't so pathetic so as to not even fight back. Any moment now I would wake up in my bed and forget all about this dream. I would just go back to wondering when my best friend was coming back from nature camp and what we would do for our first year in high school together. Any moment now I would—

That's when she started cutting.

I had never experienced much pain in my life. The worst time was when I had badly skinned my knee a few years ago when Taylor and I had been bicycling around the neighborhood. I had cried like a baby when Taylor's mom had put rubbing alcohol on the wound and bandaged me up. Some isolated scrapes and bruises, but that was it. Nothing truly serious, never the kind of pain that could threaten to drive you mad with panic and fright, the kind you would give anything to stop.

Until now.

The girl cut.

The cape watched.

I screamed.

I was thrashing about, uselessly trying to free my arms from under the thugs, to try to grab the knife and rip it away from the girl's grasp. I felt blood streaming down, past my mouth, past my chin. I could taste copper and salt on my tongue. The girl was cursing, pressing down more on my shoulders, pulling harder against my hair. The knife wasn't as sharp as it looked and she had to apply more pressure.

The girl cut.

The cape watched.

I screamed.

Flesh, sinew, and cartilage parted as the knife sawed away, proceeding slowly yet surely. The cape continued staring at me all the while, even as my nose was sawed off. Her eyes crinkled, her expression changing for the first time. Even through my agony, I recognized what they conveyed.

Disgust. Contempt. Disappointment.

Her form became insubstantial, transforming into living smoke and shadow. She blended into the darkness of the alley, slipping away as if she had never been there. And as the pain grew in intensity, the agony smashing my thoughts into a thousand splinters and leaving me more than half-mad, maybe she never had. She could have been a figment of my imagination, just another useless way of trying to come to grips with this horror.

After an agonizing eternity, the blade hit empty air and something wet and fleshy tumbled off my face and onto my shirt. The hand holding my hair let go and my head tumbled backwards, striking forcefully against the ground. I barely noticed it, my vision blurred and the center of my face hot with excruciating pain. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear away the tears as I whimpered.

I noticed that they were no longer holding me down. The thugs were standing up and the man with the bandanna gingerly held something small and misshapen between his fingers.

"Fuck," the girl laughed. "That's disgusting, Lao. Are you really going to keep it?"

"I could make a necklace out of it. Like a trophy. Get some use out of this bitch. Add some others to it later."

Weakly, I propped myself up by my hands, scrabbling backwards until I braced my back against the wall of the alley. Blood down flowed in steady rivulets from the ruin that used to be my nose. My movement got their attention.

"Where you going, ginger?" said the girl standing by Dad, the bottom half of her face hidden behind a kerchief. I tried to open my mouth to say something, but nothing came out, a lump stuck in my throat. All I could manage was a soft, rasping cough.

The girl with the eye shadow, Yan, turned back to Lao. "So, I passed, right? You'll take me to the rest of the group?"

Lao pocketed my amputated nose. "You did a decent job, but you were a little soft on her. Let her have too many chances. You can't be soft in this business." He eyed me. "Might be best if we had an encore. Really ensure your worth. Your choice this time."

I stopped breathing.

"Holy shit, you're a real freak, Lao," said one of the other thugs, chuckling.

Lao advanced on me, Yan flanking him with knife in hand. Lao grabbed me by my shirt, roughly hauling me to my feet.

I found myself suddenly capable of speech again, in short, halting bursts. "Y-y-you promised. You s-s-said that – that you would let me go after – after she was done."

Lao paused. Then he shrugged. "Guess I lied, ginger."

He lied.

He lied.

 _He lied_.

Something broke inside me, the last vestiges of any way of making sense of all this washing away.

I couldn't let him do that again. I couldn't just lie there and let her put the knife to me again—to just watch her cut off pieces of me one at a time. Even if they let me live past this, I wouldn't have really survived. I couldn't let that happen again; I would rather kill myself. I wouldn't be like Taylor—I would be worse than Taylor.

All this time, I had tried desperately to hang onto some sort of anchor, some way of grasping my sanity, so I didn't go utterly mad, to find some way to make sense of all this. But his words had taken the last remnants of my brittle stability and shattered them to pieces.

Yan grabbed my arm then.

A switch was suddenly flipped inside me. Something primal and inarticulate tore its way out of my throat, a sound I could have never imagined that I could make. Yan and Lao recoiled and I hooked my arm beneath Yan's, whirling around and smashing her head against the wall. She cried out, dropping the knife as she collapsed.

Lao was on me then, shouting, trying to press me up against the wall. I thrashed and bucked, before slashing out with my hand, my nails catching him beneath the eye, hooking underneath and digging into the meat even as I tore it out. Blood spurted and he shrieked in agony, lashing out with his fist and clipping me across my cheek. He collapsed, clawing at his face and screaming in pain.

I stumbled and the other thugs began moving as well, shouting in shock and surprise. I scrambled for the knife Yan had dropped and barely got my hands around it before one of the other gang members spun me around, making me drop the knife.

He braced my shoulder against the wall and thrust his knife deeply into my abdomen. I felt a sharp, shooting pain lancing inside my stomach, but I ignored it. I violently jerked my head forward, butting my head against his nose and he recoiled. Then I gripped his face, the knife still stuck inside me. I clamped my jaws around on his nose and bit down as hard as I possibly could.

I twisted my face, flesh and cartilage crunching between my teeth, and I felt something tear free. I spat out hot blood and meat as the thug howled in pain, stumbling backwards, trying to get away from me. The other girl and man were frozen, trembling with shock.

"Holy shit, she's gone crazy!"

I roared, pulling the knife out of my stomach, and jumped on top of the girl. I rode her hard down to the ground. Shrieking with fright, she didn't even raise her weapon to defend herself as I drove the blade into her neck. I ripped it out, her life blood arcing in a geyser as she gurgled feebly.

The other thug tackled me then, throwing me off the dying girl. He raised his knife to bear down on my face, but I raised my arm, the blade slicing against my forearm. He tried to find another angle, but I kept trying to attack his face, blocking his own attacks at mine. He switched tactics, bringing the blade low beneath my guard and began ramming the blade over and over into my stomach.

That was his mistake. He was fighting me as if I was another human being, as if I was fighting with logic and self-preservation guiding me. I was more of a beast than a person right now. I was fighting without pride or dignity, without restraint or reason. His knife was poking holes in me, but it wasn't preventing me from moving and it wasn't preventing me from hurting him. I ignored his stabs and pressed my fingers against his cheeks, bringing my thumbs beneath his eyes.

His eyes widened in fear as I pressed down as hard as I could. He shrieked with agony as I gouged out his eyeballs, the soft organs crushed easily against my thumbs. He let go of the knife, rolling off me and screaming with pain. I removed the knife from my stomach, my shirt now drenched with blood, and slammed the knife up through the underside of his chin. He stopped screaming, blood rapidly pouring out from the wound.

I grabbed the dead girl's knife and got back to my feet. The thug whose nose I bit off was gone and he had probably ran away. Yan was still by the wall, insensate as she moaned and clutched her head. Lao was by the wall across her, whimpering with pain, the fight completely out of him. He didn't resist as I knelt down and lifted his head. I slit his throat mechanically, as if it were an everyday occurrence. I watched the blood flow for a moment before I rose.

I turned my gaze to the girl, Yan. The one who had cut off my nose. I staggered towards her, the pain starting to come back as the adrenaline began to wear off. I grasped her hair and pulled her roughly down onto the ground. She yelped in surprise, her eyes fluttering open. I straddled her, the knife in my hand.

At the sight of me, she shrieked with fright. I must have looked like a nightmare out of hell right now, nose-less and soaked with blood on my face and shirt.

"You said something about an encore?" I rasped. My vision was starting to blur and I was beginning to feel dizziness set in.

Yan stammered incoherently, her face contorted with panic. "Please – please, don't! Not my face! I'll do anything, please just let me go!"

I stared at her, hatred welling in me as she virtually repeated what I had said earlier. She continued pleading in great, blubbering gasps. I didn't want to hear her talk. I just needed to do this one last thing.

I smashed my fist against her cheek, driving the back of her head against the ground. Her cries were abruptly cut off and she groaned, the impact dizzying her. I pressed my hand down hard against her forehead. I needed the leverage.

"Nose."

I put the flat of the blade just underneath her nose and in a single, rough motion, I jerked the knife up.

Yan screamed.

I accomplished in a few moments what had taken her several seconds earlier. The remnants of her nose slipped off her face, blood gushing in a fountain and running down her cheeks, down her chin, staining her shirt. She kept screaming so I gripped her throat, crushing it within my hand, her screams turning into choking gasps.

"Eye."

I jabbed the tip of the knife just below her left eye and pulled up and out. There was a horrible squelching sound as the eyeball popped free from its socket, even as the blade ripped into the flesh underneath. Blood welled and flowed from the ruined eye and Yan's muted screams grew more frantic.

"Mouth!"

My eyes felt wet and I realized that I had started crying. I smashed the butt of the knife against the side of her head, keeping her disoriented and off-balance. I grabbed her lips between my fingers, pursing them and raising them up. I rested the flat of the blade against the side of her mouth and I cut without preamble, the soft flesh easily parting before the steel. Blood welled and flowed into her mouth and she moaned wetly, incoherent phrases streaming out between her mangled lips.

I was sobbing without restraint now, my vision blurring as my hands shook. Still, I gripped one of her ears.

"Ears!"

The cartilage easily fell away, leaving a small bleeding stump where it had been previously attached. I repeated the procedure on her other ear, deafening her. She was thrashing to no avail beneath me, her hands futilely reaching for her face. She kept screaming weakly, her strength draining out of her.

I stared down at the nightmare vision before me. She had a hole where there should have been a nose, one of her eyes was a caved in ruin, her lips had been torn away, and both of her ears were gone. That would have been me. The face staring up at me is what she would have done to me.

I beat her chest with my fists, still tasting blood in mouth. I sobbed, tears streaming down my face. "You bitch! Why did you people have to do this? How could you do this to me?"

I bowed my head, blubbering and crying uselessly for a few moments. Then I shrieked and raised the knife before I slammed it home into her chest. Bone creaked and cracked, as the knife pierced through her sternum. Yan convulsed, drawing a gasping breath as her back arched from the blow. I pulled out the knife, a spray of blood following it, and I stabbed down again. I was still crying, cursing her as I stabbed her again, and again, and again, each blow weaker than the last. Her chest stopped rising after the fourth blow.

I dropped the knife. I felt my strength fading, my muscles seizing up and I felt really, really tired all of a sudden. I slumped off of Yan's corpse, rolling over to lie on my back. I saw the sky above me, clouds lazily moving past the sun.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad by my side, gripping my arm. He was shouting something into a phone, his face raw and streaked with tears. He turned to me and was saying something, his mouth moving rapidly, but I didn't understand what he was trying to tell me. I couldn't hear anything. Why was he crying? What was so sad?

My vision was fading faster now, the clouds blinking out of my sight. I felt cold spreading across my body, starting from fingers and toes and working its way towards my center. Sleep seemed like a really good idea right now. I would just take a nap... yes... just a short rest. When I woke up, we could go see Taylor. Everything was always better with Taylor around...

As the clouds faded out of view, I saw something else growing in my sight. Something vast and out of place.

There were two of them, two massive creatures that dwarfed comprehension, each the size of a small planet. They weren't vast in the same way that the ocean or the Earth was large—although it was that as well. Its extent was _deeper_ than the surface level, like a million million mirror images superimposed upon each other, moving harmoniously yet distinctly.

As enormous as they were, they contracted, expanded, writhed, and twisted without somehow altering their size, extruding extra mass and movement into their mirrors. Each of these images was somehow part of a greater whole, connected to them as my hands and feet would have been a part of me. I knew somehow that they were living entities, two parts to a whole, a part of a dance that transcended human memory and time. They swam through nothingness in vast helical movements, shedding off enormous portions of themselves in their wake.

They communicated with each other, speaking with a force that could shatter mountains and sunder continents, each individual thought more expressive than I could have imagined possible.

Destination. Agreement. Trajectory. Agreement.

Everything started to grow dim again. The last thing I saw before my vision faded was a stray fragment from one of the pair, approaching me.

And then darkness.

* * *

 **Portions adapted from Interlude 19 of Worm. The description of the trigger vision is drawn from Miss Militia's interlude in 7.x as well as the description in 11.6.**


	2. Forge 1-2

**Forge 1.2**

Darkness.

I blinked and it was just as dark with my eyes closed as with them open.

I had just started processing seeing those... _things_. I had no reference point from which I could label just what they were. As large as they had looked, I knew that they had been larger still, the vast majority of themselves locked away in countless mirror images of themselves. The closest analogy I could bring to bear to it would have been if I had thousands of copies of my own body as individual cells, all linked for the same overall purpose and function.

Paradoxically, as difficult as it was to comprehend just what I had seen, as _fantastical_ as it had been, there was something that felt real about it, something I couldn't dismiss as the result of bad trip. It wasn't something I could just ignore. They had been like living planets, traveling between the stars and communicating with something not quite speech yet not quite telepathy. They left parts of themselves behind in their wake, sloughing off like dead skin, and the last thing I had seen was one of the pieces traveling straight for me.

Then I remembered what happened before I saw the vision.

I sniffled for a minute, trying not to think too hard about what they tried to do to me—what they _did_ do to me.

And what I did to them in return.

Was I in the hospital or something? I must have lost consciousness from the blood loss and Dad... he must have gotten an ambulance. It was odd though. I didn't feel hurt even though I should have been full of holes. I wasn't numb either—I just felt really good all over. Like I had just woken up from a nice, long rest.

I rubbed my arms—the texture of my sleeves felt lacy. When did they change me into that? Since when did hospitals use lace for their hospital gowns? And it was so damned dark and quiet. The only thing I could hear was my breathing and my steady heartbeat.

I needed to get out, call a nurse, see Dad, talk to Mom, call Anne, call _Taylor_ , just do something other than be by myself. I didn't want to be alone. I just wanted to hold Taylor and have a good cry. Taylor could just blather on about nature camp, I would say a word or two, and everything would be fine. Perfectly copacetic.

I got up off the bed. Or at least I tried to.

I was able to raise my head maybe a foot before it struck something solid and hard. I blinked. What the hell?

I frowned and raised my hands, pressing and feeling against the surface. It was slightly curved, with a grainy texture, and at least a foot away from my face. I tried moving my arms to the side, but I could barely move them half a foot either way.

No. No. No.

It wasn't a bed I was lying on.

Realization set in and I screamed in terror, the sound echoing painfully back at me in the enclosed space of my casket.

"Help! Someone help! I'm alive down here, please help!"

I drew in rapid, gasping breaths, my whole body shaking as I felt the panic start to set in. I knew that I was wasting precious air, but I couldn't help it. I was inside _my own grave_. I was... God... they must have thought I died. There had been so much blood earlier. And I must have been out of it longer than I had thought.

I thought I might have a heart attack at any moment from how fast my heart was beating. I was trapped in total darkness, with barely enough room to raise my head or move my arms. I could almost feel the walls of the casket closing around me, wrapping around me in a suffocating embrace. I had only just noticed how hot it was here, the air stale and sweltering. Just how long had I been stuck like this?

"God, please, anyone... please!"

I screamed for I didn't know how long. Minutes, hours? I didn't know, but it couldn't have been that long, considering that I could still breathe. I pounded my hands against the underside of the casket, crying, begging, pleading. I stopped eventually, just content to hug my shoulders and weep.

It was no use.

Anything I said would have been muffled under six feet of dirt. And I doubted there was anyone around to listen, whatever time it was right now. I had never considered myself particularly claustrophobic, but being caught down here was like a foretaste of Hell. If by some miracle I ever survived this, I would never look at enclosed spaces the same way ever again. I whimpered and moaned, tears flowing down my cheeks.

It was just so fucking _unfair_. I had survived those thugs. They had been the predators and I had been their prey; but I had managed to turn the turn the tables, beat them one against five. I had to be buried in my own grave to finally die.

That last thought struck me as morbidly funny. I couldn't help it—I started giggling and then laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity at everything that had happened to me. It wasn't all that funny when you really think about it, but it didn't matter. I snickered, I chuckled, I tittered, I chortled, and I guffawed. I was choking with laughter, drawing in great, gasping breaths as I laughed and laughed.

It was all a big joke. I survived long enough to die in my own casket.

My laughter turned into something else. Something uglier, something less coherent. Somewhere along the way, my laughter turned into sobbing, as I gave off great, blubbering howls. I bawled and wailed into the darkness, my arms wrapped around my shivering shoulders.

I didn't want to die like this, trapped in my own grave. Oh, God, not like this. I should have just died back there in the alley, just bled out there on the ground. At least I would have died quickly enough. Then I wouldn't be here, having to face _this_.

I tapped my fist against the wooden underside of the casket. I barely had enough room to draw my fist to my chest and raise it to strike the depressed surface. My sobbing began to die down and I clenched my hand curiously. Then, I cocked my fist back to my chest again and punched the casket, harder this time. I drew back again and struck even more forcefully. I winced as the impact vibrated painfully against my knuckles.

Then I struck the wood even harder. I gave a little gasp of pain as I felt my hand sting. I propped up my legs, to give me more support. Then I drew back again and struck. I felt the casket shudder, even as I felt the skin on my knuckles break.

It was the same skin I would spend hours taking care of, buying every kind of skincare product known to man to maintain. Taylor's dad had a friend, I remembered. He worked at the Docks with Mr. Hebert and his skin had been dry and leathery, like armor. That had grossed me out, though I hadn't said anything. I had made every effort to see that my own skin was as smooth and soft as possible, no expense deferred. God, I had been so sheltered back then, so stupid.

I could barely draw back my fist for a proper punch. I wouldn't have even known how to throw a real punch even if I was given the room for it. I should have traded my beauty products and modelling classes for knives and self-defense lessons. Then maybe I wouldn't have been stuck inside this hellhole. Maybe I would have fought back sooner then.

But still I punched. And punched. And punched. But it wasn't enough. I was still holding back, bruising my knuckles at best, maybe skinning them at little. I was still afraid of damaging myself, afraid of the pain. I needed to put real effort into it, no matter the cost.

I thought of Dad. Mom and Anne. Taylor. God, Taylor had just lost her mom barely a year ago. She had sounded so vibrant and full of life when we spoke on the phone before... before _them_. I thought that she was finally coming back around, that the old Taylor I grew up with and loved was returning. Would she fall back even further into herself? Would she just stay in bed for not a week now, but a month? And Mom and Dad... I couldn't even imagine what they must have felt. What they must still be feeling.

I had to get back to them. I needed to see them again, not just lie here and wait to die.

I propped myself on the side as best as I could, drawing my fist even further into myself. Then I twisted, putting as much of my body into it as I could, striking the wood with a force that rattled the casket. I felt my skin tear open and I wept in pain, as hot liquid ran down my arm and dripped against my forehead. But it still wasn't enough. I needed to do more.

I threw my fist against the wood even harder than ever now. Wooden splinters fell onto my face and I hastily brushed them away before they got in my eye. I could _feel_ the indentation of the wood around the bleeding mess that was my hand. I was making progress, I was sure of it.

I struck even harder this time, feeling the bones of my hand shift and crunch. Blood flowed and dripped. In the darkness, all I could hear was my own steady breathing and the impact of my strikes. Lay on my side, cock back my fist, push off with my other hand, twist my hips and punch. The pain was still there and my face was hot with tears, but still I punched.

Then I felt something odd. My skin rippled and my bones shifted peculiarly. It wasn't painful, just... odd. My hand stopped hurting and the blood stopped flowing. I gingerly felt my right hand with my other hand. It was wet with blood, but underneath I could feel that the skin was smooth and unmarred. As if I had never damaged them in the first place. I took a deep breath and punched again, wincing as I felt the skin on my knuckles split. I drew my fist back to my other hand and after a few moments, I felt the skin shift and slide. And the wound was gone as if it had never been there. That wasn't normal.

I... I was a parahuman. I could regenerate apparently, undo any damage I took. I grinned in the darkness, feeling a surge of hope swell in me. It would still hurt, but this would help. This would definitely help. I still needed to focus on my task however.

The pain was less of an incentive to stop than an indication of my own success. For every agonizing crunch in my hands, for every drop of blood that splashed onto my face, I felt the indentation widen, as more and more splinters wafted down. I was striking with all the force I could muster now, and by the fourth strike, I felt my damaged hand crash all the way through the wood, grasping something clumpy.

I had gotten my arm out! I wanted to exult in triumph, but my elation turned to horror as I heard the wood creak and moan. And then the hole around my arm expanded and a deluge of earth crashed down on top of me, flooding through the hole I had opened. I opened my mouth to scream, but only received a mouthful of dirt instead. Earth filled the coffin, expanding the sides until the top burst into wooden fragments that were quickly shifted aside. A mountain of soil laid on top of me, crushing my chest even as I choked on the dirt in my mouth.

What I had forgotten to account for was the sheer _weight_ of the soil packed above my casket. Even if I didn't die from air loss within my grave, the surrounding soil _would_ keep me trapped instead. Dirt was inside my mouth, a horrible and foul-tasting mixture. I felt the earth packed around my body, wrapped around like a vise and my arm was left erect, pointed towards the surface.

I felt my heart racing as I tried to draw in air I didn't have, my brief store of oxygen eliminated when the earth infiltrated the casket and stamped my meager air supply out. My eyes were tightly shut, but I could feel tears seeping out of their corners, absorbed into the surrounding earth and my heart pounded even faster as I felt my lungs sucking on air that simply wasn't _there_.

This was even worse than the casket, worse than the alley. I should have just stayed down there, accepted my fate. I was trapped in complete darkness, suffocated to death by the oppressive weight of the earth. I felt like I was trapped in an impossibly tight blanket, drowning six feet below the ground, and no one could even hear me scream. If they ever dug me out, would they find my bones like this, trapped just above my casket? I would have sobbed, but I didn't have the breath for it.

I started to feel heady, as I was rapidly deprived of oxygen. My chest was deflated, the oxygen gone. The sensation was horrible, like I was on the verge of drowning, but not quite. Why wasn't I passing out? Didn't people pass out from oxygen loss? I would have thrashed if I had the room, just anything to get rid of this feeling.

I lay there for minutes, hours, I wasn't sure, just wallowing in the terrible sensation. I thought I might go insane from the all-consuming terror I felt. God, just let me die already, please, oh God, just make this feeling stop. I was on the tip of dying from oxygen loss, but something kept the process from completing all the way.

I thought back to when my hand had healed. And I felt a wave of despair that was stronger than anything I had felt since I had woken up. Could my power also be keeping me from passing out? Could it be that I _wouldn't_ die? That my power would keep me alive even here, trapped potentially for eternity? Just stuck like this, in a half-life confined to six feet below the surface, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to see, unable to _breathe_?

Real panic set in me then. It was the same kind of shift I had felt when Lao had told me that he had lied. The same shattering of hopes that I had desperately tried to hang onto, to try to maintain my sanity with.

I started straining against the dirt, pushing with almost no leverage against the crushing weight of the earth. I had never appreciated just how _heavy_ dirt could be, how much effort it would take to push against the all-encompassing soil. I felt bones shift and crack and I was finally able to move my arm maybe a few inches to the right.

The agony was excruciating, as I was forced to shift my muscles and limbs into situations they had never been designed for. I had to generate enough force to actively move away the dirt, working with zero leverage, doing nothing but constantly straining against the weight. I felt tendons rip and tear before they reformed, muscles bend and strain before they repaired themselves, and bones crack and crunch and then re-align.

I remembered stories of people who were able to accomplish the seemingly miraculous when truly called upon it. There had been a mother whose son had been trapped beneath a car. A woman who had probably never so much as lifted a weight in her life had found the strength within her to raise a few tons several inches off the ground, allowing her son to get free. She had saved her son, but she must have ruined her arms, possibly for the rest of her life.

Human beings were capable of extraordinary feats, acts which could vastly surpass anything you heard about in the record books. But few could live the same after achieving miracles like that. Our bodies were limited for our own good, to keep us from destroying ourselves from our own awesome power and capabilities.

I didn't know if I was any stronger than a normal human person, but my regeneration allowed me to do something that normal people couldn't. I could utilize power that would normally be nearly suicidal to draw upon. I could take my body to its limits and exceed them—and be able to live with the cost.

Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, minute by excruciating minute, I made progress, fumbling about in the dark. Finally, I was able to brace my left arm against my side. I heaved upward, throwing every bit of effort into it. Then I began to press harder, straining my upper body against the weight of the dirt on top of me and I could feel myself starting to raise myself with a frustratingly slow pace. I should have been exhausted by now, utterly drained from the amount of effort I was exerting from my own meager frame, but I felt like I could keep going for ages, regardless of the lack of oxygen I was now suffering from.

Muscles tore at the base of my shoulder and my entire body ached with a horrendous pain that made me want to curl up in a corner and do nothing but cry. But still I continued. Still I persisted. After one particularly strenuous movement, I felt something snap inside my back and I lost all sensation south of my hips. I froze, terror rising inside me before my back made an awful crunching sound and I was struck with horrible, horrible pain. I would have screamed if I was capable of it, but I just continued straining against the dirt. There was nothing stopping me besides my own will. My body could take it. It was only a question of whether or not _I_ could.

I don't know how much time passed. Hours, days? Time ceased to have meaning down there in the dark, the only sounds I had was the thudding of my chest, the cracking of my bones, the tearing of my muscles, and the slow shifting of the earth. I was lost in a whirlwind of pain and delirium, crushed by the earth on all sides, still caught at that horrible verge of drowning without dying that kept me moving, no matter how much agony I incurred. I was finally standing upright and had begun my slow journey towards the surface.

At some point, the pain became nearly all-encompassing, lighting every nerve as muscles tore and re-tore and bones broke and re-broke. Somewhere along my ascent, I ceased to have a body and was just a floating mass of pain, something that transcended mere flesh and bone, even as my material body kicked and thrashed almost of its own volition. There was almost something profound about it, like a religious experience if God had been one to favor pain.

An eternity passed like that and I was almost resigned to spend the rest of my life like this when I finally felt something _different_.

A cool breeze blew against my fingertips.

I moved more frantically now, as I grew aware of my own body once again, the agony mapping onto individual muscles and bones. I bucked and thrashed against the earth, willing myself to ascend, to get out of this earthen prison. First my fingers. Then my hand. Then my forearm followed by my entire arm. I felt a surge of triumph in me even as I accidentally broke my arm again from a particularly ill-advised motion. It was much easier now, with not as much weight to keep me down. I used my newfound leverage as best as I could, practically swimming towards the surface.

I finally got my head free of the ground, spitting out the earth that had lain in mouth for God knew how long. I ripped my other arm out from under the Earth and strained myself, roaring to the heavens, and in a single painful jerk, I heaved myself out from the hole I had created.

I lay there for a while, not moving, gulping great lungfuls of air, that cursed drowning sensation fading. Skin rippled and repaired as I felt my aches and bruises fade. There was no lingering pain, even though I should be practically paralyzed with it—my power took care of that just as well as my injuries. My eyes were still closed, but I could tell that it was dark. All I could hear was the soft sounds of my own breathing and quiet chirping of the nearby insect life. I rolled over on my back and opened my eyes, staring into the night sky.

Then I got up and turned to look at my own grave. The headstone stared at me accusingly.

EMMA BARNES

DAUGHTER, SISTER, FRIEND.

FOR YOU ARE EVER IN OUR HEARTS.

MAY 19 1995 – AUGUST 26 2009

I looked down at myself, my hands shaking. It was stained with blood and dirt from my ordeal, but I could recognize this particular dress anywhere. A little white lacy dress, probably not that impressive compared to the rest of my wardrobe. But it had a significance nothing else I could have worn did. Taylor and her mother had gotten it for me on my birthday last year, not long before she had died. It was the same dress I had worn to her funeral—Taylor's dad had practically insisted I wear it, despite it being white. I didn't wear it often, but this dress was precious to me in a way that none of my other clothes were. It was tied to a memory that none of them could match.

And I had been buried in it.

I sank to my knees, wrapping my arms around the gravestone as I wept. I cried and cried, as if I had been saving up all of my tears for now, to let the effects of what had happened to me finally hit me with full force. I recalled the darkness of the casket, the feeling of the earth crushing my body, and I shuddered, collapsing against the headstone and hugging my arms against myself. I lay there for a few minutes, sniffling until my tears dried.

I... I needed to get away. I needed to be somewhere other than _here_ , at my own grave. I never had a very good sense of direction for Brockton Bay, but any direction was a direction away from here. I tried to wipe away the blood and dirt off my dress and face to the best of my ability, but I only managed to secure a uniform smear at best.

I walked towards one of the cemetery's fences, the gate closed for the night. There were small lights stuck in the ground to light the way and I wondered what I must have looked like, nose-less and wrapped in a blood-smeared and dirt-stained white dress, looking fresh like death. I wouldn't be surprised if someone mistook me for a zombie. Actually, as far as I knew, I _was_ a zombie, or the parahuman equivalent of it. Did that make me a para-zombie then?

I giggled at that last thought. Emma the para-zombie. I could run after villains and demand that they let me eat their brains. I don't think there had been a zombie cape before. That would make my image fairly unique, wouldn't it?

I easily vaulted over the gate, an unfamiliar street and neighborhood greeting me. I gave one last glance towards where my grave had been and stepped out into the night.


	3. Forge 1-3

**Forge 1.3**

I walked aimlessly down the sidewalk, moving without any clear sense of direction. I should really be looking for a way to contact my parents soon, to try to explain the whole incredible story to them, but I didn't feel ready to face them yet. Too much had happened, too much had changed. I didn't really feel like Emma Barnes right now. Her worries and aspirations seemed like a distant memory.

I wondered if Emma Barnes _had_ died back in that alley, and I was what was left. A surge of panic welled up in me at that thought and I crushed it down. I couldn't think like that, I couldn't afford to.

There weren't very many people in this part of town but what few there were avoided me, walking around me, not wanting to come close to the weird girl without a nose who looked like she had just climbed out of a grave. Oh, right, I had done that, hadn't I?

I watched a few of the people that passed me by, one of them a girl my age that took one look at my face and stammered incoherently before moving on. Had I been like her before this? The world seemed so different now, the everyday hustle and bustle just a sideshow. I had never really experienced the kind of cruelty this world was capable of, that the thugs had easily taken to.

Before today, I couldn't even imagine really trying to hurt someone. I had just been Emma Barnes, second daughter to Alan and Zoe Barnes, best friends with Taylor Hebert, and aspiring model. I was the kind of girl that worried about breaking a nail or keeping up with the latest fashion trends. I had been the most girly girl I knew.

Now? Now, I had killed at least four people, with the kind of savagery people normally attributed to serial killers. I had bitten off someone's nose, gouged out another person's eyes, cut the throats of two people, and I had butchered the girl who had cut off my nose. Who the hell did something like that?

To just chew off someone's nose or crush their eyes without pause—that took someone who was enormously messed up inside. I hadn't known I had that in me, like some sort of beast I had kept locked up inside me. Had I always been that fucked up? Just one bad day away from turning into a complete psycho?

I wasn't worried about what I had done to Yan and the others. In some intellectual sense, I knew that I shouldn't find taking another person's life to be in anyway okay. That I should feel _guilty_ on some level for having killed them. It had been... disturbingly easy to end their lives. But, I couldn't find it in myself to care. I cared about what killing them had meant for my mental state, not so much that I cared for _them_.

I broke my index finger experimentally, the pain not even a fraction of the agony I had felt when I had been clawing my out of my grave earlier. I watched in fascination as the flesh rippled and shifted after a few moments, the bone snapping back into place. It looked the same as before, whole and undamaged. Too bad the same couldn't be said of my nose.

That knife had been sharp enough to shear right through Yan's nose. It should have cut through mine just as quickly. And I think I knew why it hadn't. Yan had _hesitated_ when she was making the cut—I think a part of her understood just how insane what she was doing was. It had held her back, if only slightly. That had been the difference between me and the thugs. I hadn't been physically stronger or faster than them, but I had been willing to do things that others wouldn't. I had been willing to throw away my humanity, turn my entire body into a weapon. That was the reason they died and I lived.

And my powers let me do the same, to perform acts that no sane human could rightly abide. To become more beast than man. How long would it be before I lost myself again? How long before I put someone else to the knife?

In my introspection, I hadn't noticed where I was going. A right turn had taken me into an alley, almost eerily like the one I had been in earlier. I backed up and collided into something solid, before being pushed forward. I turned around, confused.

There were two of them, the skinhead on the left casually opening and closing a switchblade, a long scar across his left eye. The other held what looked like a gun, the metal on the slide glinting in the moonlight, and he had a tattoo of a swastika was emblazoned on his forehead. I turned around and saw two others step out. One of them was shirtless and the other one had a horrible case of acne. The oldest was the one with the gun, but they couldn't have been that much older than me. Seventeen, eighteen at the oldest.

Scar-eye grinned. "Where you going, honey?"

Of course, I had forgotten this was Brockton Bay. One of the worst cities in the nation when it came to crime. And I had been walking around in the middle of the night in what was apparently _Empire_ territory. Stupid, Emma, so damned _stupid_. Trapped again, can't go forward, can't go backward.

Shirtless laughed. "Check it out—this bitch ain't got a nose!"

That same white noise was infiltrating my thoughts again, taking me in a thousand irrelevant directions. Shirtless was armed with a long knife, curved on the inside and it looked sharp as hell. I think it was called a "kukri" or something like that and I vaguely recalled that it was of an Asian origin. Ironic.

Acne-face growled, "Nose or no nose, you're in Empire territory. You got to pay passage."

I was frozen in place. There was a sort of inevitability, a kind of inertia that kept me from moving, from reacting. Everything was like one continuous nightmare. First the alley. Then the casket. Then digging my way out. And now _another_ fucking alley. When was it going to stop?

I tried to say something, but my useless voice was caught again, unable to vocalize anything resembling coherent speech. Swastika shoved me then, pushing me further back towards one of the alley's walls.

"Why are we even wasting time talking with this red-headed heeb? Cunts like her aren't meant for _talking_ ," he said, leering at my... assets.

The other skinheads chuckled loudly at that. I froze, the implications of what they wanted from me sinking in. This would be the final transgression, the last violation of my person. I had been mutilated, I had been assaulted, I had been _buried alive_ , and now, I was going to be r—

Shirtless grabbed my arm and grinned a horrible smile. "Just lay back and don't do anything. You might even enjoy it."

Sheer, overwhelming terror finally allowed me to do something other than stand still. I screamed and punched Shirtless just below his left eye, driving my fist in. He yelped in pain, letting go of my hand and staggering back. One of the skinheads behind me tried to wrap his arms around me, but I bucked and snapped my head backwards. I heard something crunch and the thug bellowed, letting go of me.

I stumbled forward, the other goon behind me shouting even as Acne-face came forward, his knife raised. He was saying something, but I wasn't listening, just watching the wicked edge of the knife gleam.

He came at me high, going for my shoulders, using the knife as a threat. Instead, I went low, instinctively going for his legs. I don't think I weighed more than him, but this was more about positioning and leverage than it was about sheer body mass. The momentum carried us forward, toppling us to the ground and laying him out on his back. He hadn't expected the move and the air was knocked out of him, his own body bracing my fall.

He had dropped his knife, a stiletto, and I desperately grabbed at it, needing some kind of weapon to—

There was a loud bang and then things stopped making sense. I stared uncomprehendingly at the ground for a moment, my vision blurry and out of focus. How had I gotten there? A curtain of red was descending down my vision, painting what little I could see in scarlet shades. I couldn't feel my limbs anymore, as my sight began to fade. Distant sounds died away as darkness claimed me once more.

I think I woke up sooner than later this time around.

"—had to really shoot her? What the fuck?"

People were talking. What was going on? Who got shot?

"She was going for your knife, Dietz. And it was just another kike anyway, what did you want me to do?"

"I had her just fine!"

The back of my head was throbbing with a fading pain. There was an odd sensation there and I heard a light crunching noise. My vision was starting to clear, the world slowly coming back into focus. I blinked lightly, droplets of blood falling from my eyebrows. Then I thought about what had just happened.

I... I had just been shot in the _head_? And lived?

I was lying on the ground, my head turned to look at one of the walls of the alley. One of the thugs was on top of me, searching the corners of my dress and I almost shuddered as he felt up my chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other three skinheads, gathered around each other and arguing. Swastika and Scar-eye were among them, and what looked like Acne-face as well. Which meant that the one on top of me had to be Shirtless.

When they had threatened to... _do things_ to me earlier, I had panicked. I had cast my mind back to my helplessness at the other alley, where I had just lain there and let my nose get cut off. I had forgotten one fundamental difference between that encounter and this one: I had powers now.

I had fought so stupidly just now—I let the gun stay in play, letting the thug behind me practically have a free shot. I was lucky I could apparently come back from being shot in the head, otherwise I'd be dead for real this time, after everything I had been through.

I had done better earlier against worse odds and _without_ powers. If I didn't just lose my head again— literally or figuratively—I could more than even the odds. I could do things that these thugs couldn't, gun or no gun.

I needed to capture that sensation I had back after Yan and Lao came at me again. Back when I was clawing my way out of my own grave. I needed that savagery, the same ruthlessness, the same lack of hesitation. My powers didn't make me an Alexandria. I couldn't fire laser beams at a distance like Legend or take people down with a fancy halberd like Armsmaster. I didn't have that luxury. My power just let me become _more_ of who I already was, let loose what I already had inside me. I just needed to lose my own self-imposed restraints.

Shirtless's hands came to rest near the side of my face. He looked at my blinking eyes. He stared in shock.

"Holy—"

No turning back.

I grasped his hand firmly and opened my mouth wide, shoving two of his fingers inside before he could react. Then I bit down. Hard.

Bone crunched and crackled as I felt the flesh separate. Shirtless gave off a blood-curdling scream, drawing the attention of the other three skinheads. I was already rising, my fingers wrapped around the kukri Shirtless had dropped. He was collapsed on the ground next to me, cradling his damaged hand.

They were still trying to process the scene before them, going far too late for their weapons. I was closing the distance the whole time, the kukri held firmly in my grip, only a few steps separating me from my purpose. Swastika was struggling to get his gun clear, the slide caught against the side of his jeans. I spat out the remnants of the fingers still in my mouth, right into Scar-eye's face.

"What the fuck?"

Action beats reaction.

Something raw and bestial escaped my throat and I slashed his throat, the edge of the kukri easily digging into the exposed flesh, ripping a jagged line straight through. He collapsed, clutching his neck as blood pooled around his fingers, dropping the switchblade to clatter uselessly against the ground.

That's when Swastika finally got the gun up and began shooting me again. The sound was incredibly loud in the enclosed space of the alley, bouncing off the walls and creating a painful double echo. Flashes of light illuminated the darkness, temporarily blinding me and probably himself as well. I was hit once, twice, three times. I felt each impact like a murderously hard punch against my chest, the bullets ripping through and through. It hurt less than I expected it to and I still hadn't stopped moving, focus and will carrying me through. I needed to end this quickly.

Swastika was forced to stop shooting as I ran towards Acne-face, the kukri held low and at the ready. Acne-face was right in front of me, his face panicked and filled with terror as he saw me advancing and he slashed frantically at me with his knife. I felt the edge cut against my cheeks and lightly into my shoulder, but he wasn't doing any real damage to me. I shoved him against Swastika, driving my shoulder into his light frame even as I plunged the kukri into his abdomen.

I snarled, ripping the blade through flesh and muscle, no bone to impede its progress. His eyes widened with pain and I pulled the blade in and out, tearing a line through and across his stomach. Something wet and squishy pressed against my dress, but I ignored it. The fight was completely out of Acne-face now and I brought my knife up to his throat, slitting it to finish him off and I closed my eyes as red mist splashed against my face.

Swastika was still shouting, trying to get his gun clear, but I wasn't having any of that. I kept Acne-face's dying frame pressed up against Swastika, smothering him with his own partner's weight, trapping his arm and keeping the gun pointed down. I reared back with the kukri and Swastika watched with horrified eyes as I plunged it into his thigh, the blade sinking deep into the flesh.

He howled in pain, dropping the gun as I dragged the tip of the kukri upward, slicing through muscle and tendons, and pulled all the way through. The blood loss was surprisingly minimal—I must have missed the artery. I let go of Acne-face at this point and the corpse crumbled to the ground, letting Swastika fall to the ground as well, screaming in pain as he clutched his bleeding thigh. It was the pain more than the actual damage I had done that was keeping him down.

Shirtless was running down the alley at this point, shouting something. I didn't know what he was saying and I didn't care. In my other hand, I picked up the gun that Swastika had dropped, staring at the sharp lines and black metal. It looked vaguely German. Actually, I had no idea, but I imagine that a neo-Nazi would have a German gun if anything. I looked down at Swastika, hands wrapped tightly around his thigh.

I raised the gun, kicking away Acne-face's knife, and I felt my wounds begin to re-knit and heal. Swastika watched the whole process with wide eyes, as if suddenly realizing just how far out of depth he was.

"Please!" he rasped, his shoulders shaking with pain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! We didn't mean to do anything to you!"

"You didn't mean to rape or shoot me earlier?" I said coldly.

"No, yes, I don't know. Just, please, please don't shoot!" he shouted, one hand still clutching his thigh and his other held up in a useless defensive gesture.

I stared at him, disgust welling up in me. I felt my finger begin to tighten on the trigger. Just one twitch of my finger and I would end his life. Unlike me, he didn't have powers to help him come back. The temptation was almost overwhelming. Just one pull of the trigger and a potential murderer would be off the street for good. Just self-defense, like the other times.

Except this wasn't self-defense anymore. This would be an execution. The danger had passed, the moment was gone. There wasn't any need for me to continue to be the beast anymore, was there?

I stared at him, his face contorted with terror, his cheeks streaked with tears. Was this what I had looked like back at the other alley, before I had made my decision? I... didn't like the way he looked. I didn't want to see him like that anymore. I stopped seeing him and I started seeing me. I could see my face superimposed onto his, the red hair, the blue eyes. The intact nose. I wanted to get rid of that face, I couldn't stand to see that face.

My finger wavered, but I felt something hot and ugly remain inside me. I could see it in my mind's eye— all the things he and the others would have done to me if they had been able to. All the things they probably did to other people like me. It kept me from lowering the gun and I re-settled my finger on the trigger.

Swastika closed his eyes, desperately whispering what sounded like prayers beneath his breath. How many of his victims had been in the same position? He had been willing to do that to me, just now. How could there exist _things_ like this, monsters went around and casually destroyed other people's lives on a whim?

Maybe this was wrong, but I couldn't find it in me to care.

"Live by the sword..." I murmured under my breath and then made my decision.

It seemed almost anticlimactic, nothing like what you saw in the movies. His head didn't implode or anything excessively gory like that. There was just a brief flash of light, that same loud double echo, and something slapped hard against his forehead. He slumped to the ground, smearing a trail of blood on the alley wall behind him.

I stared at the corpse for a few moments, my finger still tight around the trigger. Then I took off the slack and lowered the gun. I couldn't hear anything else but my own breathing, steady and sure. Nothing but me, the gun, and the body.

Then my hand starting shaking and I dropped the gun, the heavy metal clattering against the ground. I stood there in silence for a few moments, my hands still shaking. They had almost... God... I hugged myself, sinking to my knees as I shuddered at the thought of what had almost happened, what they had been planning to do to me.

Blood from Acne-face and Scar-eye's corpses continued to flow, mixing and pooling around the corner of the alley. The sight of it made me want to gag and I was glad I was unable to smell it, lacking a nose and all. I rubbed the blood off my face as best as I could, but it was hard as blood- and dirt-stained as I was.

I glanced at the bodies around me, the lifeless eyes of the corpses I had created. They hadn't died well even if they had died quickly. I felt a vaguely pleased sensation inside me at that thought, and I didn't know what it said about me that I could feel that way. I just didn't want to think about it anymore.

I got up, picking up the gun as I rose—I needed to be anywhere besides here. Just somewhere safe, where people would stop attacking me. Somewhere where I could feel like Emma Barnes again, not some beast hiding in human skin.

I walked in a daze down the alley, gun clutched in one hand and kukri in the other. I kept the kukri concealed, blade up, beneath the side of my skirt, and the gun was wrapped inside one of the folds of my dress. It wasn't particularly smart going out armed like this in the middle of the night—I was practically inviting trouble, but I wasn't thinking clearly right now. I just needed more than my fists if, or at this rate _when_ , something happened again. The kukri in particular was a comforting weight against my side.

The entire mess had blended into one long nightmare, beginning with the alley on the one hand and ending with another alley on the other. When would this horror end? When would it all stop?

I didn't really know where I was going, as I stepped out the alley and into another street. People continued to avoid me and I had never been in this part of town. Not that I ever had a great sense of direction to begin with anyway. Something else instead was guiding my steps now. There was an invisible, vibrating pressure at the base of my skull, with a slight prickling sensation along my neck. It became stronger as I moved forward, growing in intensity as I advanced in a particular direction. I didn't know if it was _smart_ to let myself be guided by that sensation. But, there was nonetheless a sense of _rightness_ about it, a certain inevitability.

As I walked, I thought briefly back to the fight. It hadn't last all of several seconds. This time, it had been... _easier_ this time to slip back into that state of mind. And it hadn't been that hard to decide to execute Swastika. I wondered if it was going to get easier still. There was something about that that worried me.

It was a couple of minutes later that my path took me just in front of an apartment complex. There were a few cars parked along the curb, but I couldn't see anyone around. I felt the pressure increase to almost painful levels, keeping me locked in place. For a few moments, all I could hear was my own breathing.

A tinny, mechanical voice cut through the silence. "And who are you supposed to be?"

I whirled around and my heart sank at the sight.

There were maybe ten of them, coming out from behind the dumpsters, around the bushes, exiting the darkness. Skinheads, wielding knives, chains, and a couple that had fully-extended batons. They were around me on all sides, completely surrounding me.

In the center before me was a woman, twenty-ish or so with a bleach-blond buzz cut and wearing a metal cage as a mask, with an odd metal device at the base of her throat. All she had on was a sports top and what looked like running pants. She was well-built and was clearly someone who seriously worked out. And what skin she had exposed was marred by a number of scars, some of them fresher looking than others.

A cape. _Fuck_.

She looked at me impassively, waiting on me to reply.

Then one of the skinheads spoke up. "Holy shit, that's the one! That's the one that took out Dietz and the others!" It was Shirtless—he must have ran over here earlier.

The cape glanced over at Shirtless and then back to me. She spoke with that emotionless, artificial tone, "Interesting that you'd show up here. You know I can't just let something like that go unpunished."

Her hands went behind her back and withdrew two odd weapons, what looked like small scythes, the handles about as long as her forearms. She twirled them expertly between her fingers, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, as if ready to leap into a full-sprint at a moment's notice. The vibration in my neck reached a fever pitch at this point.

Just one absurd situation to the next.

"She's mine," she declared in that same mechanical voice. "Don't interfere."

For some reason, as I took the gun out of the folds of my dress, all I could think about was why the hell these neo-Nazis seemed so obsessed with Asian weapons.


	4. Forge 1-4

**Forge 1.4**

The Nazi cape came at me fast, scythes held low, quickly closing the distance. The skinheads had spread out by now, lined up on either side of us, jeering and shouting.

"Get the bitch, Cricket!"

"Show the kike what's what!"

I ignored them, my eyes locked on the quickly approaching blonde, Cricket. I was surprised by how calm I was now. I guess I was starting to grow used to this insanity after what had been practically my third encounter with life and death on the line. I was simply too focused to panic right now.

I stepped back, raising the gun at the same time, aiming at the center of her body. It was one thing to beat up untrained thugs by leaning on my powers to carry my weight, but it was another thing to take down a cape. I couldn't afford to hold back.

I had never used a gun before, but I thought I understood the basics well enough. Point and shoot. And so I did. I started pulling the trigger, her frame fixed in my sight. Almost the same time as the hammer drew back, she sidestepped low and to the left. It was too late to pull the shot and the gun roared as the muzzle flash temporarily obscured her figure from my vision. My sight returned and she was still running at me, moving along the diagonal.

I tried tracking her, moving the muzzle left to right, and jerked the trigger again.

Two shots.

Two misses.

The bullets shattered the window of the car behind her, glass tinkling as it struck the ground. One of the skinheads yelped as a stray fragment of glass flew past his nose.

I was an amateur when it came to guns, sure, but not even my inexperience could explain how she was able to casually re-enact scenes from obscure Earth-Aleph movies at this distance. Still, while Cricket was fast, she wasn't parahuman fast. She was doing something that let her anticipate when I was going to fire, reading my body language or something. There was no gap between my actions and her reactions, not a single motion wasted—just constantly one step ahead of me. I tried not to focus too much on that as I took out the kukri in my other hand.

I fired three more times and the slide locked open, but her head simply blurred left and then right and left again before she was suddenly within my personal space, her left leg already snapping up. Her shin caught the side of the empty gun, knocking it away from me. I swung the blade towards her thigh, but she just twisted in place, her kamas slashing at the air as she avoided the blow. She struck me twice against my stomach, the fine lace of my already ruined dress torn in its wake. I hissed in pain—she had landed what felt like only light hits, as if she was just probing. The pulsating pressure along my neck was at its strongest yet this close to her.

I could already feel the cuts starting to heal and I tried to close in on her, swinging with the kukri. She leaned back and swayed her entire body to and fro like a boxer, effortlessly avoiding each attack just as I started the motion for each swing. I was practically on top of her but still she seemed to have no issue dodging my attacks even at this range. As I kept pressing my attack, I started to feel nauseous, as if I was about to throw up. After another wide swing and a miss, I stumbled as my sense of vertigo grew even worse.

Cricket lashed out, the handle of her kama catching me across the throat even as she hooked the blade behind my neck. She pulled forward and my face rapidly descended into her oncoming knee. The impact made me reel back, my head doing a number on me as the area around my right eye throbbed in pain. I staggered, my right eye shut, stumbling back from the force of a follow-up kick to my stomach, bouncing off the side of a car. Even half-blind I could still sense her general direction due to the insistent buzzing in my neck.

Even so, I barely had time to process what was happening before she scored another pair of grazing hits, this time against my arms, as my power kicked in and my head cleared. She was more than capable of gutting me with those weapons and her moves. Why wasn't she trying to finish me off?

She continued to hit me with only light cuts, slashing my shoulders, my cheeks, my forehead, and under my arms. She parried or dodged all of my attacks, and from this distance I could see a small smirk play across her face beneath the metal cage of her mask. The bitch was _toying_ with me.

I snarled and I began fighting more erratically, slashing, stabbing, cutting, and thrusting without anything resembling a pattern or structure. I was trying to be unpredictable, disrupt whatever ability she had that was letting her react to my every move. It was no use—either she would do something to counter me just as I _started_ the motion for any attack or I would be caught with another nauseous spell, the sheer intensity of it by now almost doubling me over with dizziness. It must have been another part of her powers, but I had no idea what it did besides make me want to throw up. It was effective as hell at disrupting my focus however.

This encounter was already longer than the fights at either of the alleys, which had ended in seconds. Cricket however seemed content to drag this one out. She wanted to demonstrate her superiority, show me that I never had stood a chance against her. Unless you counted my nails, I had never used a bladed weapon before today, never mind having learned how to use one effectively. The difference between the clumsy stabs and slashes of a newbie like myself against the expert and calm technique of an experienced fighter was evident. I had taken down a few untrained teenage thugs. Cricket was a fully capable cape. I had never stood a chance.

I gave another desperate slash with the kukri and this time she caught it with her kama, looping around and burying the blade deep into my upper arm. I gave a little gasp of pain, almost dropping the knife. In my distraction, I hadn't the time to stop her from taking her _other_ kama and sinking that one into my thigh. She grunted and whirled around, swinging me forward in a full-body effort with just the blades in my flesh. I was smashed against the nearby dumpster, the impact briefly stunning me and cracking the bones in my left arm. I fell limply onto my side, still holding feebly onto the kukri, blood pumping out of my arm and leg as I whimpered from the agony.

I lay there for several seconds, breathing harshly and bleeding profusely, as I looked up towards Cricket. She approached slowly, idly twirling her kamas to the scattered cheers of the skinheads. My wounds began to re-seal and she paused, watching me intently. I felt the pain quickly fading, my power doing its thing, and I slowly got back to my feet, bracing myself against the dumpster. Cricket stared at me and my healing injuries for a few moments.

"So, you're a cape then," she said finally with her mechanical voice. "Some kind of regenerator. Useful. Haven't seen you before in this city."

"Why do you care?" I said, my mind racing as I tried to think of a way to deal with her powers. Something with an area of effect might work, but I didn't exactly have pepper spray or grenades on me. I didn't have the super strength needed to toss the dumpster at her either.

She continued speaking with her creepy mechanical voice, "If you had simply been another normal, I would have left you broken, bleeding, but alive as a lesson for others. A cape however is different story—something Kaiser would certainly want to see. Whether he sees you alive or dead is up to you."

I gripped the kukri tightly between my fingers, clenching my teeth. This was part of the reason why I had wanted to move out of Brockton Bay to begin with, like I had told Dad before – before _that_. The town was practically a warzone, with fights like this day and night. If it wasn't the ABB thugs I had dealt with earlier, it would be the Merchants or Empire thugs like this cape.

"You're... trying to recruit me? Why would I want to join you after you just beat the shit out of me? And I thought I was just another Jew according to you people."

Cricket gestured with one of her kamas. "Strength attracts strength in this business. I proved my strength at first in the ring. And you've shown potential that could only be found in the heat of combat. And I'm not stupid like some of our men. Your features are too pure for you to be a kike, red hair or not. You would fit in well—the Empire takes care of its own."

She paused, waiting on me to make my decision.

The Emma from before might have gone for it. The Emma from before had given up without a fight. But, that was before the nose. Before I had broken, before I had given up my restraint. Things had gone too far for me to give in to Cricket. I hadn't let Yan take the knife to me again. And I wouldn't let myself become a plaything for the Empire.

I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. I won every life and death struggle I had ever fought in yet—not that impressive considering I had just started but I was still three for three where that counted. My first I had won without any powers. And the other two had required more than just my powers, it had been because of what I had been willing to do. What I was willing to sacrifice, what I had been willing to _become_.

I knew that I hadn't won the powers lottery. I was no Eidolon or Alexandria. I certainly wasn't even the local Armsmaster or Miss Militia. I couldn't punch Cricket into fine paste or whip out artillery fire from my pocket. I was still mostly just me. I would just have to be the best me I could possibly be. I had learned something about myself throughout this whole mess. I had learned what lengths I was willing to go to, what I was willing to give up, what I _wasn't_ willing to give up.

I turned my mind back to the alley. The helplessness I felt when I was laid out there on the ground, hallucinating that someone was going to save me, hoping that _they_ would have stopped. The feel of the knife on my skin, the gaze of the cape I had imagined, Yan's smile, and the hot agony as the blade seared through flesh and cartilage.

I could still recall it with crystal clear memory, the images as crisp and indelible as if I was still there—the horror, the sheer terror I had felt inside me when that happened, when I had been unmade. I felt unbidden tears gather at the corner of my eyes, the shouts of the skinheads fading away.

Then the betrayal, and my breaking.

Lao demanding an encore, Yan approaching me with the knife. How I had shattered, gone berserk, made my choice.

The boy whose nose I bit off, the girl whose throat I cut, the thug whose eyes I crushed, Lao whose life I extinguished... and Yan... whose debt I collected.

I had made the mistake of trying to rest my salvation in the hands of hopes and dreams outside my control, to cling onto a delusion for the sake of my own sanity. It hadn't been the cape I had imagined, it hadn't been Dad, and it hadn't been my feeble hopes in Lao's promise that had let me survive. I had drawn upon a part of me I had never known existed. It was that that let me survive, that which allowed me to _win._ I had survived only because of what I was willing to do, what I have decided to become.

I remembered drawing on that part of me during the desperate hours I spent crushed by the soil atop my casket, encased in a tomb of earth, literally tearing my body apart as I ascended to the surface. And when I killed those Empire thugs just minutes before, the same source of power had fueled me, honed my conviction and guided my body.

I still didn't know if I could beat Cricket. I didn't know if I was going to be back with Mom and Dad at the end of tonight or stuck in some Empire torture chamber. Cricket was faster than me, she was stronger than me, and she was definitely more experienced than me. But I had a gut feeling that she wasn't more _desperate_ than me. I was going to lean on that, make her unwillingness to cross the line into a liability, turn her _humanity_ into a weakness.

The buzzing along my neck increased in intensity and the kukri suddenly felt... _odd_ in my grip. Welcoming, almost familiar. There was... it wasn't quite words. It wasn't anything as cliché as a voice in my head. But there was definitely something different now, something I hadn't quite felt before. A presence of some kind or another. I focused on that feeling, kept it fixed in my mind.

I opened my eyes. Cricket was still there, waiting on me. She studied my expression and I thought I saw something like a glimmer of respect in her eyes. She nodded.

"Death then."

My mouth was dry, but my mind was set. "Looks that way."

She spun her kamas even faster between her fingers now. "Might be an issue considering your power, but I'll try to make it fast."

I thought she had been fast before, but now she was attacking me at full speed, closing the gap between us in two swift steps. Her twin kamas were a uniform blur in the dark, each blow designed to cut deeply, rend flesh from bone, rip into my vitals, tear me to pieces.

And I was somehow countering it. Barely.

My body was moving practically of its own volition, shifting into stances and settling into movements that were simultaneously both familiar and alien to me. She came at me with a vicious double overhead press with her scythes. I parried one of them, pushing it into its partner, fouling up the attack with its own structure. Her eyes narrowed but she recovered quickly, her knee rising to complete a kick as she regained her grip on her weapons.

I closed the distance then, going inside her guard to kill the power of her counterattack, even as I thrust with the kukri at the same time. She managed to stop her attack in time, spinning in place on her one leg in a move that I was pretty sure I had only ever seen in a gymnastics competition. My attack went wide and I overshot past her. Cricket recovered, coming back for a follow-up swing with one of her scythes. I moved along the diagonal, guiding the blade away and forcing it towards the ground, as I then reversed my grip to cut at her forearm. She simply let go of her weapon and my kukri whistled as it struck empty air. She kicked the falling kama by its handle and it spun back up into her waiting hand, ready to go for another exchange. The whole time she was watching my limbs, eyes darting back and forth.

And for several more seconds, we continued that deadly dance, with each move met with a counter-move and a counter for that, a high speed and extremely lethal game of chess. I had no idea how I was doing this, never knew that this was a part of my powers. Still, I could feel the _rightness_ of each movement, like puzzle pieces falling into place—I knew the appropriate attacks and counterattacks, how to shift my weight to ensure maximum thrusting force, how to secure my guard with my other hand, and how to maintain my footwork, superior technique allowing me to keep pace with her superior reflexes. I was fighting as if I had been a master of the short blade in a different life.

But I was quickly losing the clarity. As the seconds ticked by, my form became sloppier, my openings became wider, and whatever transmission I was somehow receiving grew murkier and murkier. The next exchange she cut a shallow red line across my stomach. And the other after that she grazed my forehead, as I barely dodged the scythe that would have cut through my neck. I tried to maintain the same feeling that had allowed me to access this aspect of my power, to focus on losing my restraints. But it wasn't enough and she was quickly beginning to make progress.

And that's when she start blasting me with her power. Waves of vertigo stronger than ever before ran up and down my body and I could barely stop myself from convulsing over to vomit. I gasped as she struck her worst blow yet, ripping a long gash down my left forearm. I stumbled over myself, scarcely avoiding a follow-up strike that could have very well opened up my thigh. I saw her continue to stare intently, her gaze rapidly switching back and forth between my individual limbs and my torso.

I... had an idea.

And like most of the ideas I had ever since this extended nightmare began, it was going to hurt. A lot.

I steeled myself, and backed up as fast as I could from her incoming onslaught of attacks, intentionally moving myself into a corner between two cars. Cricket pursued me without fail, her eyes shining with triumph.

I knew what I had to do. She was making the same mistake the ABB thugs made in the alley. They treated me like another person when I had been fighting, as if I was concerned with protecting my body first and foremost, as if I wasn't willing to do anything it took to win. This wasn't some fucking prize fight. This was _combat_.

And so, when she went for her next attack, the one that would bind me, practically put me in her mercy, I didn't back up. I surged forward into her attack, feeling one of her scythes sink deeply into just below my armpit, the other plunging into my abdomen, ripping into my guts even as she began to try to disembowel me. I think that hurt, but I was distracted by a significantly more pressing pain.

The same time I had pressed forward I had opened my mouth, teeth over my tongue. And I bit down almost as hard as I could. The pain was dizzying, as I felt my teeth sink deep into the flesh. I hadn't meant to scream right after, but it served my purposes all the same. I choked and spat out blood, the hot liquid spilling through the mesh of Cricket's mask and splashing onto her eyes. It provoked a visceral and nearly instantaneous response from her. She roared in shock, the blood stinging her eyes and she let go of her kamas as her hands went reflexively but uselessly for her eyes, blocked by her own protective mask.

And in my disjointed daze of overwhelming agony, the pieces of my tongue connected by a small strip of flesh and my gut threatening to spill out, I still managed to plunge the kukri deep into her thigh and pulled down. She gasped in pain, as I had scored the first real hit on her since the fight began. Brilliant red blood sprayed—this time I _had_ hit the artery. Whatever power let her wade through gunfire and parry knife attacks didn't seem to work if she couldn't _see_.

Cricket lashed out with a blind kick that pushed me away, my kukri still stuck inside her thigh. I was then hit with a full face blast of nausea and the things that did to my bleeding gut made me want to curl up in a corner and cry from the agony. I staggered, my mouth filled with blood though my tongue was beginning to regenerate. I pulled out the offending kama from my abdomen, my other hand pressed against the open wound. I tried not to think too hard about what the slimy sensation I felt with my hand meant.

I still felt vertigo in rapid flashes as I advanced towards her, her kama in hand, the other still buried in my side. Even blinded, Cricket still seemed to have some idea of just where I was and she turned to face me, her hand going for the kukri that was still stuck inside her. She was blinking rapidly, trying to clear the blood out of her eyes.

I couldn't let that happen and I ran towards her, her kama in my grasp. She kept moving backwards, but unlike me, she didn't regenerate, and her movement was significantly slowed by her leg injury. I was practically on top of her when she pulled the knife out of her leg, blood pouring out in rhythmic spurts. No matter the outcome of this exchange, she was practically a dead woman walking with the amount of arterial blood she was losing.

The fight had turned on its head in practically an instant and whatever was left was mere formality. I didn't bother to block her desperate slash with the kukri and I felt it rip through my shoulder, blood flowing. I ignored it, sinking the kama deep into her own abdomen. She grunted and I pressed into her, pulling across, ripping through her guts as I disemboweled her as she had practically done the same to me. Her power was still coming in sporadic flashes, little bouts of nausea that made me stumble a few times. But she was like a dying gazelle at this point, running on empty, and I was the lion bearing down on my kill. There was no escape for her.

She staggered backward, pressed against another car, her hand clutching her bleeding stomach. Another slash of the kukri scored a hit against my forearm, but I simply pressed against her gut wound. The pain made her gasp and her grip on the kukri slackened. A hard shoulder check made her drop the blade and it slid beneath the car. I raised the kama and struck once more, the blade slipping into the space just below her armpit. She was moaning in agony now and slumped to the ground, one hand clutching her bleeding thigh and the other wrapped around her stomach. I transferred the kama to my other hand before I ripped out the one still stuck on my side. I placed both on each side of her neck. The skinheads were shouting something, moving closer, coming to crowd around me, but I wasn't paying attention.

Cricket had finally managed to blink away the blood by this point. She stared at me dully, the color in her eyes quickly fading. Not too long ago those same eyes had been bright with life, even as she had tried to strike me down.

I felt sickened. This wasn't a fight anymore. It was pure murder.

Not too long ago I had just been your ordinary fourteen year old, going around worrying about what brand of make-up I should be using or worrying about passing algebra in the coming school year. Everything was just so screwed up. Ordinary teenagers weren't forced to choose which body part they wanted cut off. Ordinary teenagers didn't have to fight like an animal to barely survive. They weren't forced to dig their way out of their own _fucking grave_. They weren't caught in fatal duels with capes in the middle of the night.

And they weren't asked to pass a judgment of life and death on someone else.

But with the amount of blood she had lost, there was no chance that she would live through this anyway. This was at best a mercy killing, an ending of her pain. I had made it this far. I had already set myself along the path of casting aside my humanity, of calling upon the beast inside me if that's what it took. I couldn't stop myself now.

And in any case... I could feel something inside me telling me that this had been inevitable, had been practically destined. Ever since this fight began, ever since I was guided to this location, it was always going to come down this. I had never realized how ugly and raw combat could be, what it meant for it come down to you or them.

This wasn't some Saturday morning cartoon; we weren't going to come to some kind of mutual understanding, enter as enemies, leave as friends. She had given her best to see me dead. It was always going to come down to either me or her.

We weren't both going to survive this. I understood that now, and I could feel something in me slipping away, some last resistance to what I had to do fading. I could feel that same presence in me again, guiding my hands, lending me the strength to do this.

In the end, there can be only one.

I drew back and struck with both kamas at full force, cutting through flesh and bone. Cricket's head bobbed and slid off her neck, a spray of blood following it. It rolled a couple of times before it came to rest against one of the wheels of the car, her eyes staring lifelessly into the night sky.

For a moment silence reigned.

I could feel a sort of building pressure in the air, an invisible tension that seemed to grow tighter and tighter with each passing second. The thugs seemed to detect it as well—they had stopped shouting. Then something very odd happened. A blue electric haze surrounded Cricket's corpse, levitating it a couple of inches off the ground. I stared at it confusedly for a second.

That's when the lightning bolt struck me full force in the chest. I gasped, my body convulsing and my back arching as electricity ran up and down my body. It wasn't painful _—_ instead, it was as though I was connected to a font of pure power, flowing right through me, right _into_ me. I was shouting, screaming inarticulately as foreign sensations and images passed through my mind.

Tendrils of lightning flowed between myself and Cricket's corpse—and then the storm began affecting the surroundings as well. Hoods off of nearby cars exploded, blown clear off their hinges and arcing high in the air. Car windows shattered in successive bangs, peppering myself and several of the thugs with their fragments and car alarms all around blared. They were shouting again, several of them running away but I couldn't pay attention to them, still caught in the grip of the power that suffused me.

Lightning flared and roared, setting alight anything that got near. It kept me from collapsing, keeping me ramrod straight. I don't know how long it lasted. It felt like hours, as experiences I had never witnessed passed by at a million miles a minute.

 _I was surrounded, the two of them boxing me in. It wasn't like it was in the cage. One of them held the knife at my throat, the other kept me trapped, arms around my waist. The blade sinking into my skin, couldn't fight, couldn't fight, couldn't fight. Then an image, twin monstrosities winding around each other—_

 _It was another new ABB recruit, barely a teenager. I slit his throat with my scythe, cutting deep into his flesh—_

 _Kaiser was shaking my hand, welcoming me into the fold. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stormtiger approaching, an odd metal object in his hand—_

 _Brad and I were sparring again, a throwback to our cage fighting days. He was favoring a high guard and I could see his left leg snapping up. I checked the kick with a knee and grinned, pressing forward to drive him back—_

 _My attacks were swift and efficient, effortlessly tearing down the chinks. One of them tried to shoot me, but I could see every motion, my body moving into positions I had long since mastered—_

And on and on without pause. The images continued to pass by, in a rush that overwhelmed my mind. The storm reached a fever pitch, my body shaking violently. The nearby apartment gate had been blown wide open, dumpsters were over turned, and water geysered as a nearby fire hydrant exploded.

The world bled away as the lightning engulfed me, completely surrounding me. I stood there for a subjective eternity, time ceasing to have meaning as the sensations sped by. The closest thing I could compare this to was back when I had been stuck clawing out of my grave, when I had ceased to have a body and became nothing but pain. It was a sort of emptying of my self, an outpouring that set every nerve afire with sensations that were not quite pain yet not quite pleasure either.

It stopped without warning, the energy that kept me upright disappearing in an instant. I fell to my knees then, my blades falling out of my grip. I breathed harshly for several moments, the air abuzz with the sounds of car alarms and roaring fires of several ruined vehicles, as I tried to regain my composure in the wake of that... experience.

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. There were at least two thugs still left, poking gingerly at a headless corpse. They saw me then and shouted.

"She's still here!"

I jerked at that and rose to my feet, grabbing my weapons, preparing myself to sprint at them. They were several feet away, one of them raising a gun. That's when I realized that I could _see_. I could see each individual twitch of their fingers, the flexion on their arms, the rolling of their shoulders.

The thug lined the gun up with my stomach. I saw the hammer on the gun pull back as his finger squeezed the trigger. My body was on autopilot, reacting almost without conscious input. I flowed to the right, a movement smooth as the hundreds of times I had practiced it before. I could almost _feel_ the bullet as it slipped past me, nearly grazing my arm. He fired again and this time I weaved my head in a fast sinuous motion, the round missing just as well.

"What the fuck?" said the gun wielding skinhead, beginning to blast away erratically with his firearm.

I nimbly avoided each shot, my body moving not so much as quickly as it was moving efficiently. It wasn't like the movies—the thugs weren't moving in slow motion, I hadn't gained more time to react. Instead, what I had was _clarity_ —I could see the world in razor-sharp focus, each detail present to me, telling me a story, speaking to me in terms of moves and countermoves. It wasn't that the world had slowed down—my mind had simply sped up.

I closed the distance in a few seconds, dodging yet another bullet. The other thug was spinning a chain in his hand and he lashed out, trying to catch me with its heavy weight across my side. I snaked under the blow, simultaneously dodging yet another shot. In that same motion, I lunged forward. I hooked his arm with one of the scythes, lifting it out of the way even as I scored a hit across his chest with the other blade. He gave a little gasp of pain and tried grabbing at me. I danced out of reach, feeling a smile starting to come to my lips.

The other thug was turning around, trying to track me with the gun but I had maneuvered over to his side by now. A rapid set of moves ripped the gun out of his hand while I tore a long cut down his forearm. I backed away, landing two light slashes against his cheeks as I did. He tried going for the gun on the ground but I checked him with a kick across his face that broke his nose. He howled and collapsed, blood spurting between his fingers as he clutched his face.

The next thug tried coming at me, going for a double leg tackle but I just stepped forward, my knee meeting his face. He staggered backward and I pressed the assault. He tried fending me off with his arms, but he paid for it dearly, each strike splashing blood as I slashed his arms, cut his shoulders. His arms dropped, weakened, and I finished him off by cutting his throat.

A shot rang out, nearly taking out my ear. I swore, not having paid complete attention to my surroundings again. I needed to know exactly where he was, couldn't afford to just turn around when seconds mattered in fights like this. That's when I could feel it, the low pulsing sensation just beneath my throat. I grabbed at that feeling, a constant vibration beneath the surface of my skin, and _pushed_ it out.

Information flooded my mind in instant. I knew the position of the corpse at my feet, the distance between me and the other thug I had downed, who was getting back to his feet, just where the two cars behind me were, and most of all, where the thug I hadn't seen earlier was. I _felt_ all that, more so than I actually saw or heard anything. The information left me almost as soon as it had come to me.

I jerked forward, anticipating his fire from his last known position and the bullet blurred over my shoulder and ricocheted off a nearby wall. I sent that pulse again, faster this time, and I felt the knowledge come back to me. The gun wielding thug was moving now, trying to get into a better position.

The other goon was nearly at my back and I whirled around, just as the knowledge disappeared. He came into my vision again, each individual movement once more comprehensible and within my grasp. I didn't waste time—one strike went deep into his hand, forcing him to drop the knife. Before he even had a chance to scream, I had buried the other blade into his throat. I ripped both weapons out and he fell, shuddering as blood poured down his cut throat, staining his chest.

I sent that pulse out again, keeping track of the remaining enemy. He was having some difficulty moving into position now, stumbling as if he was punch drunk. It was difficult to send out this power continuously—it seemed far easier to stagger its use. If my sighted reflexes were analog, this was digital.

I turned to face him. He was struggling to maintain a steady grip on the gun, several yards away as he was. I flared my power again, studying his motions, reading his body language. There was no reason for me to dodge. I approached calmly, each bullet missing, his aim wildly off base. A bullet passed by my cheek but I didn't flinch. He doubled over, his body slightly shaking as if he were going to vomit. I stepped forward, kicking away the gun in his hand. He had the knife waiting and readied in his grip and he lunged to try to bury inside my chest. I stepped aside, tripping him on the way. I caught his throat with the edge of one of my scythes as he stumbled forward and _pulled_. A fine red mist sprayed and he collapsed, gurgling as blood began to pool under his head.

There was no one else left.

I stared down at my hands, the spell that had come over me starting to fade. The kamas felt unfamiliar in my grip again, the sharp focus I had felt disappearing. I stood there, in the midst of the roaring car fires and alarms, the ground strewn with shattered steel and glass, surrounded by the four corpses I had just made.

The world looked different now, familiar sights now presenting themselves with an almost painful clarity, as though I had never seen it before. I stared at my reflection on one of the blood-stained kamas, a nose-less girl looking back at me, the image wreathed in flames.

I felt... different now. I _was_ different now. I couldn't pretend that I could ever go back to being the same person I was before, I couldn't afford to ignore what had happened here, what had led me to this. When I had decided to finish off Cricket, I had both gained and lost something inside me. I had cast myself down a path that was altering me, would probably continue to change me. I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I had killed a lot of people. I had murdered them with a savagery and focus that might have made the Slaughterhouse Nine pause. But it had come down to me against them. And I had chosen me. I had made the choice to strip off my humanity, to become the beast. That's what I had done when Lao and Yan had betrayed me, when they had lied. If I didn't make that choice, then I would just be the same as the Emma that let her nose get off, the same girl who had clung to delusions to try to save her sanity rather than fight back.

I didn't want to be that person again. I didn't want to think about the knife cutting into me, what Yan and the others had done, what I had allowed to happen. I don't know if I could survive another experience like that. I might live through it physically, especially with what I could do now. But I wasn't sure if I would be able to live in the ways that mattered.

After everything today, I just felt tired. Not physically—I was as awake as ever—but there was a weight on my heart that made me want to lie down and have a good cry. Was this the choice I had? Be a victim or become a monster? Every time I had fought so far, I felt a little more of myself slipping away. How long could I keep doing that, cutting off pieces of my humanity one step at a time? Would there come a time when all _this_ just became normal?

When I killed Cricket and was stuck in the middle of that storm, there was a part of me that _liked_ that. There had been a certain privilege in being witness to that, devouring her memories and apparently her powers as well. My power didn't just let me become more of who I was. It let me take my enemies' own power, add their being to mine, let me become _them_ if I needed to.

I needed to talk to someone—Dad, Mom, Anne, Taylor. I needed to get away from here. I didn't want to be surrounded by the blood pooling at my feet or watch the accusing stares of the corpses I had made.

I was now a part of a world that seemed to operate off of an insane logic, where teens like me could be called to fight for their life at any moment. Where people wielding impossible powers used them to harm more often than to help.

I looked towards the horizon, a faint white line present as the first bout of dawn was about to break. I didn't know what the future held in store for me. I didn't know in what ways I would change further. I still wasn't sure about the person I was anymore.

But I planned on finding out.

* * *

 **Cricket's style and moves inspired from her appearance in 7.8. And so the fusion is revealed, for better or worse.**


	5. Forge 1-5

**Forge 1.5**

I washed off the blood and grime as best as I could underneath the gushing water of the broken fire hydrant. I couldn't stay here for long but the cool water blasting against my face and body was refreshing. I stood there for a minute, trying to think of better times, trying to ignore the lingering taste of iron on my tongue. I remembered when Taylor and I went swimming two summers ago. I smiled to myself, eyes closed. We had gotten into _quite_ the water fight and Anne had even gotten involved in the fun. Soon—I'd see them all again soon. I kept that vision fixed in my mind, something for me to keep moving forward for, my own light at the end of the tunnel.

I stepped out, soaked from head to toe, my dress clinging wetly to my body. With my developing body, I would have been a shoe-in for a wet T-shirt contest if it wasn't for the leftover blood, the fact that I was still missing a nose, and that I probably looked more than a little deranged all around. The whole image was likely more off-putting than it was alluring.

There remained a lingering sensation as though I was covered in blood and I resisted the urge to dive back into the rush of water. I looked down at myself, examining the damage to my dress. Damn—sorry, Taylor. It had been my most treasured dress, but now it was ruined beyond repair, dried blood having soaked deep into the white lacy material and it was torn badly in several spots. Just another thing I had lost and wouldn't be able to replace thanks to this incredibly fucked up day.

I hesitated, but I eventually worked up the courage to sift through the bodies left behind. I tried not to look too hard at their faces or Cricket's head—their eyes sightless and staring at nothing at all, the evidence of my work. Cricket hadn't had much on her—just a cell phone, but the screen was cracked and it wouldn't turn on. She had a harness on her back to secure the kamas and I took it and strapped it around my waist, locking the scythes into place. They felt secure, but also as though they could be deployed at a moment's notice. Handy.

One of the younger dead skinheads had a long dark red coat that seemed to fit well enough and I put it over me, trying to cover the wet, tattered remains of my dress as best as I could. The color would also help conceal the blood. All of the other cell phones I had found also refused to turn on—they must have gotten fried from the electricity earlier. They hadn't carried much in terms of cash—I found maybe one hundred bucks altogether that I stuffed into one of the wallets I took. One of the corpses had a red and green kerchief stuffed in a pocket. I paused and then took it out and wrapped it around my face, Miss Militia style, before retrieving the kukri next to Cricket's body.

I already spent too much time here. I needed to leave immediately—for all I knew, the other Empire thugs that had run away might return with backup. I was already well past the number of fights I had been anticipating I'd ever have to get into.

Although... I wondered if I would gain _more_ powers and memories just as I had gained Cricket's. The buzzing in my neck had led me to her. I could probably find other capes the same way. The Empire had been hitting ABB territory all night and I had an idea of just where to find other patrols, where the latest safehouses were. Then, all I had to do was kill some Empire capes and with each one that I killed, it would be easier to— _what the hell am I thinking_?

I shook my head, trying to steer my thoughts in a different direction away from _that_ particular insanity. I didn't need to go up against someone like Stormtiger or God forbid, Kaiser on top of everything else that had happened and I didn't need to go looking for an excuse to kill even more people.

I walked quickly down the street, moving as fast away from the apartment complex as I could. The apartment residents might have seen the fight and light show after and I didn't want to stick around for the police or the PRT to show up. I just needed to get home, see Mom and Dad, just have a place where I could do something besides having to go from one fight to the next. Where I didn't have to become the beast again, to lose my self just in order to survive.

I didn't really know how to get to home from here—we lived just south of the Boardwalk—but I just needed to get away from here first. If I went fast enough, maybe I wouldn't run into anyone else.

I should have really learned by now not to be so optimistic.

I was tracing my steps back to where I was earlier, going back towards the alley. I heard the sounds as the corner leading back approached—the barely muffled cries of pain, the irregular thudding noises.

"—fucking chink! Think you can just waltz around wherever you want!"

I peeked around, trying to see what was going on. There were two of them—one of them was a skinhead and the other had a mohawk. There was someone else at their feet, curled up with his hands over his head. The skinhead drew back his leg and kicked hard against the person's stomach on the ground, eliciting another cry of pain. The mohawk laughed, throwing in a kick of his own across the mouth.

The beaten man simply whimpered in pain and even in the dim light, I could see splotches of red staining his face. He saw me then, his eyes desperate and pleading. I flinched—that's probably what my eyes had looked like when I had imagined there was a cape back at… at the alley.

Both thugs had their backs to me. I could have probably snuck past, no problem. But I couldn't just let someone get beaten up like this. I couldn't just abandon them like the hallucination I had seen had left me to die. I don't think I could live with myself if I just left him to the mercy of these thugs, let what happened to me happen to him.

Besides, I was already pissed off against the Empire tonight as it was. If it came down to another couple of corpses… I'd deal with it.

I tensed and stepped out, only a few yards away from the three of them.

"Stop doing that!"

The skinhead paused mid-kick before both thugs turned around to face me. The mohawk had a gun holstered at his hip, and the skinhead had his hands inside a jacket pocket over what suspiciously looked like the profile of another gun. My fingers itched to draw the kukri beneath the coat.

"Who the fuck you supposed to be?" said the skinhead, squinting his eyes to try to get a better look at me.

"The person telling you to stop trying to beat someone to death," I snapped.

"Fuck you, I bet you're just another chink or jap like this fucker here," said Mohawk, flipping me off. "Now we just got two slanty-eyed yellows to fuck up."

I shouldn't have been surprised that yet another fight would be waiting almost literally just around the corner. I could feel the beast just under the surface of my skin, begging for release, calling on me to quench its thirst. I pictured the ways I could take them apart—I had learned more about how I could break down a human being in the last day than I had ever wanted to. I could just bear down on them, just get this over with—just another two corpses of my own doing.

It was hard to form the words between my clenched teeth, but I managed them just the same. I'd at least give them the chance if nothing else. "I don't want to hurt you. Just step away from him and leave both of us alone."

The skinhead laughed. " _Hurt_ us? We're the ones with the guns here. Fuck, let's just take these bitches over to Hook—"

Screw this.

I was done with words. I was tired of being tossed from one struggle to the next. I was done listening to them and their useless voices. Yan, Lao, the Empire thugs from earlier, Cricket, _these_ Empire thugs—it was just a blur of monsters wearing human faces. I was done hearing them talk, make justifications for their depravity. I was done watching them continue to breathe. I was just _done_.

They thought I couldn't hurt them? We'd see.

I let loose an utterly feral roar—raw, primal, and fierce. I poured as much of my frustration, my exhaustion, my grief, and my fury as I could muster into that scream. The sheer and sudden volume startled them, making them physically step back and buying me a couple of seconds as they struggled to react.

A couple seconds was all I needed to close the distance. I had never been the fastest runner at school and had never been particularly athletic, but right now as I sprinted towards them I felt as though I was practically flying across the pavement, taking out the kukri out from beneath my coat at the same time. Mohawk was struggling to draw the gun in his holster when I was just inches away from him, my kukri already stabbing deep in and out below his armpit.

He screamed in shock, trying desperately to get away. I kept moving forward, shoving him back against his partner, thrusting again just below his arm, imagining the blade perforating his lungs in my mind's eye. I was going for his throat next but I missed, slicing into his cheeks, spilling blood across his face. He was weakly stumbling back, getting in his own partner's way who still didn't hadn't drawn his own gun.

I snarled and pressed forward, physically driving Mohawk into the skinhead. Off balance as he already was, the force sent him and his partner directly behind him toppling to the ground. I pounced on top of him and this time I pressed the edge of the kukri hard against his throat and pulled, turning my head so that blood sprayed against the kerchief instead of into my eyes. Mohawk gurgled wetly, blood draining out of his throat and down his shoulders.

One down.

The skinhead was desperately scrabbling backwards on the ground with his arms and legs out from under his partner's body. He was shouting something hysterically but I wasn't listening. I was too focused on my task, too caught on what I was planning on doing next, too fixated on adding his body to the others.

I leaped off Mohawk's corpse, closing the distance between me and the skinhead in a heartbeat. He kept awkwardly retreating back on his hands and legs, like a crab, but it was a futile effort. I had just gotten on top of him when he had finally managed to draw his gun out of his jacket, moving it to point at my face. I grabbed at it reflexively with my other hand, closing my grip over the barrel. There was a loud bang and my hand was suddenly hot and wet with pain.

I screamed in anger more than pain at that and I kept my grip over the barrel of the gun. I heard frantic clicking as the skinhead kept pulling the trigger, but no additional shots rang out. I didn't waste time contemplating my good fortune. The moments the skinhead wasted pulling the trigger in panic were the same moments I spent placing the kukri against the skinhead's throat.

Rinse and repeat. I felt the blood splash against the fabric of the kerchief again, as the skinhead blubbered bloodily and his arms slackened. I was still breathing fast and watched the lights die in the skinhead's eyes, before I got up. Two pairs of lifeless eyes stared back at me, as if judging me. I turned my gaze away.

This had been the shortest fight yet and I hadn't really gotten that injured. I was starting to become better at all this. It was taking less and less effort to slip into my bestial mindset, to commit myself to win at all costs. That probably wasn't a good thing. I didn't have the time to introspect here—I'd beat myself over it later and somewhere safer. Preferably at home.

I raised my injured hand up to what little light there was here, looking at the bloody hole the bullet had torn through. I watched as flesh and bone closed over itself and soon the only evidence of the wound from before was the blood dripping off of my palm.

I turned to look at person who had been getting beaten up earlier. I hadn't paid him any attention while I was busy with the pair of thugs. He must have stumbled away during the fight, his back now to the nearby wall. He _did_ look Asian and was maybe early twenties, his mouth and the side of his face heavily bloodied. He clutched his stomach, simply staring at me with wide eyes, as if unsure what to say.

"Holy shit, nice work, Red!"

I whirled around, my fingers tightening over the kukri. There were four of them—three of them armed with knives and the fourth held a long chain. They looked vaguely Asian, wearing mostly red and green. ABB thugs, like the ones back at—I shuddered and swallowed. The memories of that encounter were still too fresh in my mind, the things Yan and Lao had tried to do to me, what they had done to me. I don't think I could ever forget _that_.

One of them with a knife had spiky black hair, with an earring on his left ear. He nodded towards the man still sitting on the ground. "Thanks for helping out Jiro there. We were real worried about him."

I glanced back at the man sitting by the wall, still saying nothing. He must have been ABB as well. I almost laughed—I had just saved an _ABB_ thug. I was so stupid. He was just another one of _them_ in the first place. I should have just ignored him and let the Empire thugs do the work for me.

I grasped the kukri so tightly that my hand was trembling. The ABB ran farms out of the city, sold girls like me to become playthings for pimps, with the better looking ones being sold to the highest bidders. They destroyed the lives of families like mine on a daily basis, ruled over by a monster of a cape that even the local Protectorate was afraid to tangle with. These thugs were cut out of the same cloth as Yan and Lao. It was because of people like this that things like – like the _alley_ happened in the first place.

Fuck them. I had just come down from killing a couple of neo-Nazis and I hadn't quite let down the beast yet. I had taken down an Empire _cape_ not too long ago. Some Asian thugs, one of them already out of it, would be pushovers by comparison. What were five more bodies at the end of the day?

I rapidly looked back and forth between them, already trying to figure out who to go for first. The thug I had saved was still injured badly, so I didn't have to worry too much about him. The closest one with the knife looked the youngest, maybe not that much older than me. He seemed thin and frail—he would die fast enough, probably would bleed out quickly. I'd take him first. I could go for the one with the chain next, cut his throat on the next pass, use his body as cover to take down the other two and then finish off "Jiro" in the back. Just a few seconds and another five corpses to add to the tally

They must have sensed my hostility because they paused in their movement towards me, hands twitching as if to raise their weapons.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Red," said one of them, waving his hands, a tattoo of a flaming dragon on his exposed right forearm. "We're all Bad Boyz here, right?"

I blinked. What?

He grinned, gesturing at my hands. "Saw you heal right up—you're a regenerator like the boss, 'course not near as good. We've been sent to handle the Nazi fucks that keep trying to make moves on our territory all night, but I didn't know we had a cape here already. Nice moves on those skinheads just there."

I got it then and almost laughed in disbelief. They thought that _I_ was an ABB cape? They thought I was with the ABB when it was only because of the ABB that I had gotten into this extended nightmare in the first place?

I guess... I could sort of see it. The most you could probably see of me given the kerchief was my hair and my eyes. I didn't exactly scream "white girl" in the low light of the early morning. The kerchief was ABB colors after all—the dead skinhead I had gotten from must have picked it off of some ABB thug earlier. Plus I had just killed a couple of Empire goons to save an ABB thug in the first place, which they just come in time to witness. With all that, I could see why someone might think I was with the ABB.

I took a deep breath and counted backwards from five, feeling my bloodlust abate somewhat. I didn't need to get into a fight if I could avoid one. I'd just have to word this right and try not to mess things up. Hopefully, I could talk my way out of this.

If not, I could always just kill them all anyway.

"Been tangling with skinheads all night," I said, maintaining a strong grip on the kukri. "Annoying dealing with them and all, but I managed fine."

The thug with the chains eyed me suspiciously. "Why haven't we seen you around before earlier during the raids?"

I spoke with a confidence I didn't really feel. "Because I've been dealing with their _capes_ not the random grunts like you were, you idiot. Just came back from messing with that Cricket bitch—she wasn't all that."

The same thug said skeptically, "Cricket's been with the Empire awhile. Got any proof, Red?"

"Yo Shinji, no need to start shit. She's a cape, man," said the thug with the dragon tattoo nervously, his eyes flicking between me and Shinji. The other thugs tensed, as if a fight was going to break out at any moment.

I stared intently at the thug named Shinji or whatever. He must have seen something in my eyes because he swallowed, moving back a step. For a few seconds, no one spoke, the threat of immediate violence filling the atmosphere. And for a moment, I wanted to just cut loose again, stop wasting time talking and start spending time _killing_.

"It's alright," I said finally, trying to regain my composure after how close I had been to losing it again. I just couldn't show weakness here. I had to come off as self-assured, confident as if there was no challenge at all. It was the same tactic Dad told me he used whenever he faced down a hostile witness in court. "It's easy enough to prove, no problem."

I put the kukri back underneath my coat and then I slowly withdrew the kamas out from behind my back. What I did next was more instinctual than planned. I focused on the memory of being caught in that lightning storm earlier—the sensations that had ripped through my body, the memories Cricket had that lurked just beneath the surface of my conscious awareness. Something instantly _clicked_ and the world sprang into focus, just like it had before, acquiring a clarity that left me almost breathless, even the most minute movements and details present to my perception as anything else.

Then I realized that I should have done that when dealing with the Empire thugs just earlier. Oh well.

The kamas were comfortable weights in my hand and I twirled them between my fingers, the motions smooth and natural. "Do you know anyone else in the Empire with a pair of these?"

"Whoa," said one of the other knife-wielding thugs, the thin one, his eyes wide at the display. Shinji promptly shut up at that, blinking with an expression of disbelief. It seemed that my tough guy—or in my case, gal—act was working well enough.

"Wait, you _killed_ her?" asked the man with the dragon tattoo.

"Turns out that the master race bleeds just like anyone else," I said simply, returning the kamas back into the harness. After a few seconds, the world lost its clarity again. The contrast was disappointing and I wanted to call back that feeling again. I didn't, though.

"We gotta tell Oni Lee, man," said the one with spiky hair. "Eighty-eight's not gonna be happy about that."

"Fuck no," spat Shinji. "You _want_ to talk to that freak? Fucker gives me the shivers. No, we tell Hiroshi and _he_ can tell Oni Lee."

I needed to end this conversation, find an excuse to move out of here and away. "Where are we at anyway?"

The thin goon with the knife looked confused as he helped Jiro to his feet. "We're not too far from the Docks. How do you not _know_ that?"

I felt a vague sense of shame at still having a terrible sense of direction, despite having grown up in this city. "I'm new to the Bay—just came in not too long ago."

The man with the dragon tattoo grinned at that. "Welcome to New England's asshole, Red."

I chuckled as best as I could at that. "I need to get near the Boardwalk, just south of it or so. You know how I can get there?"

The other thug with the knife folded his arms. "Why'd you need to go the Boardwalk? Fucking PRT and Protectorate's all over that shit—not even the boss tries to mess around there too much. All the fighting's over here abouts tonight anyway."

I shrugged. "Boss's orders. I don't make the decisions, I just follow them. And I don't need to go to the Boardwalk—I need to go just south of it."

Shinji grunted. "There's a bus stop just about past this alley, if you turn left and go about a block or so. Right now... it should take you to Independence and Briarhollow after maybe eight or nine stops."

Briarhollow—I remembered that was the major street just bordering our neighborhood. Perfect. I could easily find my way home once I was on that street and surrounded by familiar sights. That was my cue to leave. They gave me the information I wanted—there was no further need to keep talking to them. I paused, and for a moment or two, my hand slowly crept towards the kukri beneath my coat.

Then, I stepped past them without preamble, keeping them in my peripheral vision as best as I could. Jiro feebly thanked me through broken teeth as I passed by.

"Later Red!" called out one of the thugs, the five of them fading into the darkness.

* * *

No one else bothered me as I made my way down the block. The few that passed by avoided me—I guess this _was_ ABB territory after all and I was wearing their colors. I hesitated before loosening and taking off the kerchief, pocketing it. The lack of a nose would draw some attention, but not as much as practically declaring myself to be another ABB thug would.

I found the bus stop easily enough. There was only one other person by the stop—she took one look at me and scooted away as far as she could on the bench. The bus arrived after ten minutes or so and I got on. The driver looked at me suspiciously as he took the cash I had gotten from the skinheads earlier, but he let me stay on.

The minutes passed by as we drove. I could see the skyline getting brighter, but it was still fairly early in the morning and only a few people were on the streets. My dress was growing drier as well, finally. It was uncomfortable being stuck cold and wet for so long underneath the coat.

I closed my eyes, content to sit in silence. I didn't feel tired at all—strangely, I don't think I had felt physically tired throughout this entire ordeal so far, except back – back at the alley. I tried turning my thoughts away from that, but my mind kept retreating back to Yan's face. After I had been done with her—the eye I had cut off, the nose I had sheared, the mouth I had torn, and the ears I had sliced off. Her remaining eye stared accusingly back at me in my mind's eye.

I don't think that it wasn't guilt I was feeling right now—it was... something less definable than that. Some other sort of distress. I just felt _lost_.

I had killed... maybe thirteen people all around? At – at the alley, I had taken down four. Then another three with the skinheads at the _other_ alley. Finally four more including Cricket and the last two Empire goons to top it off. Thirteen in all in one day. I was practically a mass murderer by this point.

I had done all of that without hesitation, without any kind of restraint. And with each body I made, it became easier and easier to sink into that mindset—kill or be killed, victory at any cost. Even now, I couldn't actually muster up anything like _regret_ for killing anyone yet. If anything, I regretted not taking down those ABB thugs just now. I could have still killed them anyway, after they had given me the information I wanted. It wouldn't have taken long—just a few seconds and a few more murderous thugs off the streets. I doubted anyone would have missed them anyway. Why hadn't I just killed them?

It was frightening how simple it was to turn a living, breathing human being to just a bleeding corpse on the ground. Just a few cuts here, a movement there to change someone from alive to dead in a couple of moments—all their hopes, dreams, and ambitions gone in the blink of an eye. I had turned my entire being into a weapon, killed thirteen people with an animalistic savagery and fury that I hadn't known I had within me. I had gouged out eyes, I had bitten off fingers and noses, I had slit throats and torn into arteries—it must have been by sheer happenstance that I hadn't done something more extreme like rip into someone's throat with just my teeth. Hell, maybe I _would_ before this insane adventure was done.

I knew that wasn't normal—a normal person wouldn't just gouge out someone's eyes without feeling _some_ kind of resistance. You just didn't do things like that. A normal person wouldn't do the kinds of screwed up things I had allowed to be done or had done myself to my body. I mean, who thought nearly biting off their own tongue, regeneration or not, to blind their enemy actually counted as a plan?

What the hell was _wrong_ with me? Before, I would have complained just breaking a nail. Now, I could freely contemplate chewing off my own tongue just to win. How had Emma Barnes ever come to this? Was I always this messed up inside, the psychopath in me just lurking beneath the surface of my skin?

I didn't know. I... I'm pretty sure that I was in a screwed-up headspace. I recognized the problem if nothing else. I needed to try to talk to someone—Mom, Dad, Anne, _Taylor_. Someone that could help me un-screw it, do something that actually let me feel like Emma Barnes again, not this... predator just moving from target to target. I didn't want to be a victim anymore—I didn't want to be the same Emma that let Yan just cut off her nose. But, God help me, I didn't want to turn into a monster either.

Taylor would know what to do, wouldn't she? After all, she had lost a part of herself not too long ago as well, but she had remained strong. She had been coming back to herself. I heard it in her voice when we had talked before – before the alley. I remembered sitting with her in the playground the month after her mother had died. She had been able to hold herself together then, at least during the day. She had proven that she was strong enough to make it. If anyone knew how to get through... through all _this_ , it would be her. She could show me how to have the same resilience that she had.

If not... if this continued, I don't know if I could ever relate to what Emma Barnes used to do, what she used to _be_. What were boy bands and modelling classes when compared to blood and guts, violence and savagery, to kill or be killed? I think what really scared me was that things could get to the point where I wouldn't _care_ about that anymore either. That I could discard myself like an old set of clothes and embrace the beast inside me.

I opened my eyes—the sky was much brighter now. There was no point torturing myself with my own self-doubts and worries. I just needed to focus on getting home, seeing Mom and Dad—that came first. Then... then we could talk.

I glanced over the side and saw familiar landmarks and sights. We were coming onto the intersection the ABB thug had mentioned, the one not too far from my house. There were more people on the street now—with all the stops in between, it must have taken us nearly an hour to finally get here and it was reaching towards the end of early morning most likely. After a few more minutes, the bus came to a halt and the driver declared the intersection—Independence and Briarhollow.

I stepped off with a couple of others on the bus, everyone giving me a wide space to get away from the weird girl missing a nose. I ignored them. This intersection was right by a local church close to our home. If I remembered correctly, I'd have to walk down Briarhollow... _this_ way.

It didn't take too long to find the street leading into my neighborhood. I trudged down the sidewalk, a growing sense of trepidation building in me. What would I say to them? What would they think seeing their recently departed daughter returning literally from the grave? I felt my heart thudding as the familiar sight of my house approached and I stopped midway down the sidewalk. A girl my age on a bicycle did a double-take as she passed me by.

I ignored her, my body shaking. I was almost ready to break down in tears right then, just run away in the other direction. Goddammit Emma, you were able to survive way more screwed up shit than this. You can still face your parents after everything. It would get better. It _had_ to get better.

I kept moving forward, the house quickly growing in my sight, my eyes fixed on the front door up the steps.

Odd—the sedan in the parkway didn't look like anything Mom or Dad ever drove. Maybe Dad had quickly replaced the one we had been driving earlier? They had broken the glass in the window I had been sitting in before... before I was dragged through it. I also thought I remembered Mom's garden having more roses. She had begun planting a bunch of them after Taylor's mom died last year—they had been close friends, like Taylor and me.

I didn't focus on that as I approached the door, going up the steps. I felt like I would have a panic attack out of anxiety at any moment, still not sure what I was going to say, what I was going to do. It felt like so long ago since I had last been here, everyday sights seen from an unfamiliar light. I stood there for a minute like an idiot, rooted in place and trembling. Why was the thought of seeing my parents again making me freeze up like this? Just knock on the door and I'd be done with this insanity. Just a few steps separated me from getting out of all of this.

I swallowed down my fear and finally knocked on the door a few times. After a minute, I went ahead and rang the doorbell. I heard movement from inside the house, sounding like it was coming from upstairs. I could hear the lock open and the door swung open.

I stiffened at the sight, not sure what was going on and not sure what to do. From the expression on the man's face, he was in the same boat. He had balding white hair, with a thin beard and was dressed in a green cloth robe. He blinked at me blearily, the eyes on his wrinkled face widening as he took in my odd appearance. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds.

"Who are you?" he asked me in a wheezing tone, looking me over suspiciously.

A woman stepped into view, dressed in a similar cloth robe. She wore horn-rimmed glasses, long white hair flowing around her shoulders. "Who is that, George? Oh, my!" She finally noticed my lack of a nose.

"That's what I was just asking her, Alice," said the man in a grumpy tone. "Well? What do you want at this hour, young lady?"

I backed up a step, feeling my heart thud against my chest. This was the right house—it was on the same street, same address number, it had to be. I stammered, "I – I – I thought this was the Barnes's house."

"Barnes?" said George quizzically.

"Oh, you must mean the family that lived here before. They moved out months ago, I'm afraid," said Alice hesitantly, pointedly looking away from my face.

"Months ago? But... but how?" By now, the world had taken on an almost surreal quality. I didn't know whether to stay here or run away as fast as I could. My need for answers kept me fixed in place for now.

"Some lawyer and his wife. Nice couple—I think the husband worked with Brandish's firm," said George, shrugging.

"Yes, he did. They had lost their youngest daughter," said Alice in agreement. "Some terrible attack in the city—it was horrible to see them so torn up about it. It was a fast sale all around. I think they just wanted to get away from bad memories. Were you a friend of their family?"

I almost giggled at her last comment and I stopped myself from just laughing out loud. I would have looked more than a little screwy doing that. And for all I knew I was. I should have known that the madness wouldn't end, not even on the front steps of my own house.

I managed to find my voice again. "No... not exactly. What – what date is it?"

"June the seventh by this morning," said Alice bemusedly.

"And... the year?" I asked, my mouth dry, scared to hear the answer.

George looked at me as if I had lost it. "Two-thousand and ten."

Alice said something else after that and I could vaguely tell that she sounded concerned. I wasn't listening. That white noise was sounding in my head again, preventing me from connecting my thoughts in any logical order, bringing to me to my knees. I could see my hands shaking terribly and I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes.

I had been wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. It hadn't been a few hours or a few days even.

Nine months.

I had been gone for over _nine months_.

* * *

 **In other news, being Emma is suffering, as we come to the other big reveal in this arc.**

 **The brief fight in this chapter was inspired by the** **Tueller Drill** **exemplifying the so-called "21 foot rule." Essentially, a typical assailant can traverse 21 feet (around 7 paces) and stab someone in about 1.5 seconds, which is around the time a trained shooter can un-holster and fire... but that's usually in terms of drills when one is** _ **already**_ **anticipating said attack from said distance with an exposed holster no less.**

 **As far as additional gun-related trivia goes, the reason why the skinhead's gun failed to fire after the first shot here was that it went out of battery from the point-blank contact shot against Emma's hand—a malfunction which can and does happen on many recoil-operated semiauto handguns. Not that Emma knew this or cared.**


	6. Forge 1-6

**Forge 1.6**

I sat on the porch for several seconds, saying nothing, still reeling from what Alice and George had said. I just stared at the ground, not knowing what to think, what to do. Nine months—how could nine _months_ have passed by?

"—miss, miss! Are you alright?"

I looked up to see Alice looking down at me, slightly stooped over. She had her hand held out to me, her wrinkled face taut with concern. The expression on her face, the position of her hands and legs—it was eerily familiar.

For a second, I thought I saw Mom's face, a distant memory I had forgotten about returning to me. Taylor and I had been only eight or so, playing tag or some other silly game like that in my house. Mom had been cleaning the dining room floor that day, the hardwood floor slippery and wet. I had taken a bad fall trying to turn a corner and I had landed flat on my face.

I hadn't hit the floor that hard but I had been a big crybaby back then, ready to turn on the waterworks at a moment's notice. I remembered Mom coming into the room, crouching down, the same expression of worry on her face as she held out her hand to lift me up.

The memory faded as quickly as it came to me and Mom's face melted back into Alice's. And at that moment, I hated Alice for that—that is was her, not Mom who was here to pick me up when I fell. That it was them, not my parents, who were living in my own house, the same one I had known for all of my life. I just stared at Alice and she awkwardly withdrew her hand after a few seconds.

I got back to my feet. Looking around, I could see additional differences from the house I remembered. There were now garden gnomes in front of the porch, the swing Dad had made out of a tire was gone, and the door was a different color than before. I had been so caught up in the thought of seeing Mom and Dad again that I hadn't paid attention.

I finally managed to find my voice. "I'm alright. Just… a little surprised. Sorry, it's a little difficult to explain."

"You really didn't know what year it was?" Alice asked after a moment's pause.

I wasn't really sure how to answer her in any way that didn't sound either stupid or utterly crazy. I could only imagine how telling the truth would go— _you see, I just climbed out of my own grave not too long ago; turns out that I've been dead for a little longer than I thought!_ I said nothing in reply to her question and there was a long, uncomfortable silence.

George just watched me with narrowed eyes, flanking Alice in an almost protective stance. I guess between my somewhat disheveled appearance, the fact that I lacked a nose, and that I seemed to be out of the loop enough to not even know what _year_ it was didn't exactly sell the impression that I was on the up and up.

I had to try to stay on track—find some kind of ground to stand on. I asked, "Do you know where they ended up moving to?"

His voice laced with suspicion, George replied, "No, they didn't tell us. Just _why_ do you want to find them anyway?"

I couldn't tell him that I was the dead daughter that they had just mentioned. I paused for a moment, unsure what to say.

"I… knew their daughter." It wasn't really a lie. It was true, from a certain point of view—I just didn't clarify the whole truth. In a way, I was just acknowledging that the Emma Barnes from… _before_ and whoever I was now really were different.

As Taylor would have said, I had just mustered my inner Obi Wan. The rest of it came more easily to me.

"I knew her parents well. There were some things that she wanted to tell them—things she would have wanted me to tell them face-to-face."

"I'm sorry," Alice said. "We really don't know where they went. We signed the contract and closed the deal in less than a week."

"You have some idea, don't you? I mean… they didn't say off-hand where they were going? Are they still in Brockton Bay?" I asked, looking for something to grasp at.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, we really didn't know them that well. We only met them twice. Our agent handled most of the communication throughout all of it."

"I don't suppose you know anyone that would?" I said, a stray bit of desperation entering my voice.

"I'm really quite sorry," said Alice and she really did look apologetic. "We didn't pry and we didn't look into it. And it's been months by this point."

"But—"

"I think my wife's made clear that we don't know anything about them," interrupted George forcefully, glaring at me. He was clearly dismissing me, wanting to end this inconvenient conversation as quickly as he could.

For an instant, I felt a spark of the same rage I had felt when I met those two Empire thugs earlier, just before I had violently ended their lives. I brutally crushed the feeling down. I might be a little unhinged right now, but I wasn't about to kill an elderly couple just because they didn't have the answers I liked. I wasn't even close to being _that_ far gone, no matter the things I had done so far.

I inhaled sharply and nodded. "I'm sorry for disturbing you. I'll just have to figure something else out."

Alice looked slightly embarrassed by her husband's hostility. "It was no bother. I really do hope you're able to get ahold of them. I'm sorry we couldn't be more help."

"I… hope so too. Thank you anyway," I said, stepping off my front porch— _their_ front porch now. George watched me for a few seconds as I walked away, shutting the door once I made it to the sidewalk. I heard the dead bolt lock firmly into place behind me.

It was only when I made it to the edge of the neighborhood that I finally let out the tears that I had been holding onto the whole time.

* * *

After I was done crying by the sidewalk, I got back to thinking, sitting by the curb and watching cars pass by. By now, the sun shone brightly and it was probably close to mid-morning by now.

I had no idea where Mom and Dad were. Before _them_ , I had been trying to convince Dad that we should move further south. I'd still be able to go to the same school and everything. He had flat out refused and told me that one of the things he hated most was moving. Of course, he would exactly that _after_ everything had happened.

I shouldn't really have expected anything to become easier just because I was able to get up to the front steps of my own house. Not mine anymore now.

I just felt… weary, I guess. I was ready to be done with this whole situation. Ever since those thugs had cornered us back in that alley, I had been trapped in one continuous struggle, like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. At the alley, I had—God, just thinking about it almost want me to burst into tears again.

After that… I remembered being stuck inside my own casket, when I had thought I was stuck in a box with no escape. And just when it looked like I had hope at last… I shivered, hugging my shoulders as I recalled the dirt flooding around me, trapped on all sides, feeling like I was drowning, the horrible sensation of my deflated lungs laboring for air—

I breathed, counting down from ten as I shook away the memory. In some ways, the grave had been _worse_ than the alley. I had clawed out of my own grave, went through more pain than I thought I could possibly endure, and it still hadn't been over—the skinheads that tried to take advantage of me, the duel with Cricket, dealing with Empire thugs again.

And now, even when I had gotten to the house I had grown up, the same one Dad promised he would never move away from? It figured that they weren't there, that this… whatever you could call this situation would continue. That I wouldn't have a chance to just fucking sit down and not have to worry about what I had to do next.

I was just tired of going on with no direction, walking from place to place, moving between kills and from one conflict to the next. I just really wanted someone to hold, someone that could help me deal. I didn't want to be alone in this mess anymore.

I couldn't go to Mom or Dad, seeing as how I had no clue where they were.

But, I could go to _Taylor_.

I felt bad just thinking about it, but Taylor's family wasn't as well off as us. They had never been poor but they had been having some money problems ever since her mom died. Taylor and her dad probably couldn't afford to move to someplace else and I knew that Taylor loved that house anyway. Even better, Mr. Hebert was good friends with Dad as well—he would know where my parents had gone.

They would still be here. I could still find my best friend. She could be my shoulder to cry on.

I looked down Briarhollow, the street that just bordered our neighborhood, watching as traffic began to accumulate. This part of Brockton Bay I _did_ know well enough. Taylor and I had biked to each other's houses so often for the route to be practically engraved into my head. I could get to her house no problem.

I didn't have my bike with me and it would take me longer, but I could walk the distance easily enough. I went down the side of the street, moving around the occasional passerby. Not many people were walking down this sidewalk and the few there that there were passed around me without so much as a glance.

Several minutes of that passed by before I started lightly jogging just to go a little faster, proceeding down the side of the road. After a moment's hesitation, I started to pick up more speed as I went, slowly at first but rapidly beginning to ramp up the pace. I ran faster, and faster, and faster, and faster still until I was flat-out sprinting, moving more quickly than I had ever run in my life.

 _And I wasn't getting tired_.

The sensation was odd. For the first several seconds, I could feel my leg muscles just beginning to take on that burn you get from a good workout, but it would fade almost immediately. After a minute or so, there wasn't the slightest discomfort in my legs anymore, my breathing steady and regular even as my heart raced.

I had never been a particularly sporty person before. Mom and Anne were the real athletes in the family and Mom had even ran in the Boston Marathon a few times before. She told me that during a really good run, she would hit the point where all of the pain and exhaustion would disappear— like she could just run and run with nothing but her to hold her back. It would disappear soon enough, but that sensation was why she always came back to running she had told me, to try to reach that same elusive state as much as she could.

I think that's what I was feeling right now and I could see exactly why she loved running so much. I felt weightless, almost as if I could just jump and float away at a moment's notice. Each stride on the pavement landed smoothly, my steps swift and effortless, and there was no pain at all in my legs. I felt ridiculously good right now, contentment washing all over my body.

I didn't lose awareness of my surroundings—the world actually seemed sharper than ever—but it didn't seem to matter as much, almost as if I was someone else watching my own body do the work. I felt like I could run forever—just me, my legs, and the track ahead. Everything seemed within my grasp, no goal seemed out of reach, like I could do anything at all, as if I was as invincible as Alexandria.

Maybe this was what getting high was like. I think I liked it.

A grin crept up my face as I kept running and running. I let out a delighted whoop as I raced around a corner, badly surprising a bicyclist that I easily blurred past. I bounded over a dog with a giggle, landing without difficulty and resuming my pace. More than one pedestrian yelped in protest as I left them in my wake, startling them out of their morning reverie, and I just laughed and laughed. I knew I wasn't Triumvirate-grade or anything like that, but right now? My powers were _awesome_.

A lot of bad things had happened to me. There were still things I needed to face, things I needed to deal with. But for now, I wasn't thinking about anything else but the sensation that suffused my entire body, just satisfied to bask in it. I'd handle after when it came. For the moment, I'd just concentrate on the run, focus on getting to Taylor.

In the distance, I could see the sun slowly tracing out a rising arc in the sky, ascending higher and higher, and my heart soared with it.

* * *

Unfortunately, the feeling diminished when I had to slow down after a few minutes. For one, I still had to stop at the intersections. I might be able to regenerate, but I wasn't going to tempt fate by trying to run past moving traffic. In addition, I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself running like a maniac in plain sight. I already looked somewhat shifty as it was between my face and my clothes. I didn't have to act like it on top of that. I still got more than one wary look in my direction every so often.

I jogged the rest of the way towards Taylor's house, still feeling the muted afterglow of that feel-good haze, only picking up a little more speed once I reached the side street off of Lord Street that would lead to Taylor's neighborhood, further west and just south of the Docks. She didn't live in the bad parts of city, but she had always been a little closer than any of us had liked.

I stood by a bus stop, waiting for the incoming traffic to stop. A teen in a hoodie was next to me, jamming out to some tunes that softly sounded out from his headphones. He took one look at me, blinked, and returned to bouncing his head to the rhythm of whatever he was listening to. The crossing signal changed and I walked over the other side, retracing the path to Taylor's house in my mind's eye.

It was only a block later that I finally made to Taylor's neighborhood. I went straight back to sprinting down the sidewalk at full speed, the same euphoria from before slowly coming back as I began to pick up speed. I saw her house quickly approaching and I slowed down to a steady jog.

I came to stop just before her house, taking it in. The front garden was scruffier and the bottom step looked a little more rotten, but otherwise it looked almost exactly the same since I had last seen it. The blinds on the windows were shut and upstairs I couldn't see if any lights were on. I went up the steps, taking them two at a time before I stood right in front of the door.

I took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell, hearing it ring inside. I waited for several seconds, anticipation rising in my gut before I rang the doorbell again. No one answered. I frowned, ringing a couple more times. I glanced at the empty driveway—Mr. Hebert must have gone to work. I didn't know what time it was, but Taylor tended to be an early riser like her dad. She couldn't still be asleep, could she?

I jumped off the front steps, my knees easily absorbing the shock. I went around the side of her house towards the back, past the chain-link gate separating her house from her neighbor's. I stepped around the back garden, until I was by the walkway leading to the back entrance.

Taylor's family tended to keep a spare key under one of the stones here. I looked around for a minute before I found it, its color different from its partners. I lifted it out of the way, looking for the key underneath.

There was nothing.

I blinked in surprise before I put the stone back, looking up at the back steps leading to the kitchen. For a second, I had the wild idea of forcing my way inside, just smashing through the door or breaking one of the windows to enter the house, and shouting for Taylor.

I shook the thought away—I didn't need to do anything that crazy yet. Messing up Taylor's house wouldn't help me at all. Her dad was probably at work and Taylor was just… somewhere else. That was it—she must have gone somewhere in the morning and taken the key with her. It could be that she was out on a morning run or something. My mom and hers had gone running together in the past. Maybe Taylor had taken up the hobby too?

I went back to the front of her house and sat on the top of the front steps. If I waited here long enough, I'd probably catch her when she came back.

I sat in silence for a while. A few people across the street gave me odd looks as they left their houses to go about their day, but I ignored them. I just closed my eyes, content to wait for now.

Another memory came back to me suddenly—Taylor had somehow gotten it into her head the summer we turned eleven that she wanted to go camping with me. Unfortunately, Brockton Bay didn't have anything in the way of camping spots and both of our parents had amusedly but firmly said no to the idea of us hiking it out on our own somewhere outside of the city.

However, when Taylor got it into her head to do something, there wasn't much that could really stop her—she was like a force of nature once she really got going and all you could do was just hang for the ride. She wasn't the sort of person to back down—as she used to say sometimes, "resistance is futile."

So, if we couldn't go out of our homes into the wilderness to camp, then we'd just have to bring the wilderness home. So Taylor's mom had bought a small tent, Mom and Dad got the sleeping bags, Mr. Hebert and a couple of his friends had gotten food and the materials for a campfire—kindling, tinder, and firewood—and just like that, we were in business to camp out in her backyard.

We had "hiked" all over the neighborhood, clad in hastily put together survival gear, and instead of dealing with raccoons and bears, we had to manage the local squirrel population. We weren't allowed to start the fire all by ourselves, but Taylor had managed to cook a halfway passable lunch of baked chicken and burnt potatoes. She did end up cheating when she asked her mom to make a few sandwiches for us later, something I had remembered teasing her the rest of the day about. We watched the sunset, counted the stars, and slept inside of our tent.

I smiled to myself, more details of our brief adventure returning to me. Looking back on it, it had been such a silly idea, but I'd give anything to return to those days. Things had been so much simpler then, the world didn't seem as menacing and terrifying as I had learned it could be. Those had been better days. Right now, I'd go on a hundred fake camping trips with Taylor if it meant I could get back that same feeling again, so I wouldn't have to think about everything that had happened, so I wouldn't have to feel like a fake wearing Emma Barnes as a disguise.

I think almost an hour passed before I was willing to admit that Taylor wasn't going to be returning to her house anytime soon. If she had just been on a morning run, she would have come home long before now.

I could see a couple of people in the house across the street, looking at me through their windows. I probably looked suspicious, a strange nose-less girl just sitting on the front steps of someone else's house like this. I considered approaching some of her neighbors earlier to see if they might know where she had gone, but I didn't want a repeat of the disappointment I had when meeting Alice and George earlier.

Taylor was probably busy with whatever she was doing in the city right now, wherever she was. It was the summer, wasn't it? She was probably out and about.

Maybe she was hanging out with some friends of hers—I felt an ache in my heart at that thought. It's not like I could blame her—anyone would have thought I was dead. It had taken her a year, but she seemed to be getting over her mom's passing the last time we had spoken. She had probably come to terms with my "death" even faster than that.

I didn't know if I could do something like what Taylor did. She was stronger than me. I hadn't even fought back at the – the alley until it was too late. … Could I really be strong enough to ever come to terms with everything that had happened to me? Could I come back the way Taylor had been? I couldn't even think about the—fuck, the _attack_ without freezing up.

I clutched my head between my hands and shook my head. There was no point thinking along morbid lines like that for now. If Taylor really had moved on, if I really had been replaced… I'd cross that bridge when it came to it.

I couldn't just wait here and reminisce on better times or otherwise keep beating myself up. I could just… come back later or something. I could go the Boardwalk—we used to hang out there a lot, didn't we? Chances were good that I'd run into her, seeing how close she lived to it. I could actually get something to eat and have a chance to just sit down and think. And even if I didn't see her there, she'd probably be back home by the time I returned.

I got to my feet and jumped off the front steps back onto the ground. I glanced one last time at Taylor's house before I walked over to the sidewalk and took off, accelerating to a full sprint once more.

* * *

It took me maybe a half-hour to get to the Boardwalk from Taylor's house, heading towards the ocean as I went east. Eventually, I had to jog through the bridge that hung over Lord Street and then it was an easy block from there to hit the Boardwalk, as pavement gave way to wooden platforms.

If there was ever a reason for tourists to come to Brockton Bay, it was definitely to come visit the Boardwalk. It ran up and down along the coast, just above the beachfront. Shores lined the wooden walkways, where you could get anything from designer dresses that cost at least a thousand dollars or more, to electronics stores selling the latest smartphones or mobile devices, to restaurants and cafes where just getting a coffee could easily cost you twenty bucks.

It was definitely past mid-morning by now and the Boardwalk was teeming with people getting their morning fix or heading out to the beach for some windsurfing. I kept my head down as best as I could, but more than one person caught a look at my face and either stared at me or walked away as quickly as they could around me. I probably looked a little out of place here, with what I was wearing and my face as it was.

The Donut Hole was one of the first shops near the entrance to the Boardwalk. Taylor and I would come here all the time to get some coffee, maybe a couple of their special donuts, and take in the sights, do a little window shopping. Thankfully, the Donut Hole wasn't too expensive as far as the Boardwalk went. I went in and ordered a cappuccino and a frosted donut. The cashier politely didn't say anything about my current nose-less state—my money was as good as anyone else's, when it came down to it.

I sipped my drink outside, my arms on the railing. It was the middle of the summer, but it usually never got all that warm in Brockton Bay, excepting the odd day or two out. Right now, it wasn't exactly chilly, but it bordered on the edges of it. A gentle ocean breeze wafted through the air and I could taste the salt from the sea on my tongue as I watched the waves come in and out.

Frequenting the Boardwalk might be expensive living, but you definitely got a killer view of the ocean if nothing else. And in the center of it all was the PHQ, where the local Protectorate was housed. It was an awe-inspiring structure that floated out in the middle of the Bay, complete with forcefields and missile defense systems. It was a reassuring sight, even in a city where people like Kaiser and Lung got to roam free.

My mind began to wander again as I drank and I thought back to what George and Alice had said.

June seventh, two-thousand and ten—it still felt unreal, just repeating the date in my head. Mentally, it had been the twenty-sixth of August of last year for me not just a few hours ago. Instead, I had learned that in reality, nine months had passed by while I was… dead?

How did that even work? I was no cape geek, but I was pretty sure there had never been a power that required you to play _dead_ for nearly a year before it kicked in. Seeing how I had been buried and all, for all intents and purposes, I must have been well and truly dead after… after the attack. I didn't think there were capes that could come back from the dead after almost a year, but I guess there was a first time for everything.

Thank God Mom and Dad hadn't decided to have me cremated instead.

On the topic of powers, just before I woke up in my casket with them—give or take nine months—I had seen those… _things_ , whatever the hell they were. I knew that powers were weird, but seeing space-traveling creatures the size of planets that could somehow communicate was definitely a new one.

The scary thing was that for as massive as they were, I knew that they were somehow even larger still—as if you rammed in a bunch of copies of the exact same object in the exact same position in space. I had no idea how that was supposed to work and I probably wasn't close to qualified to figuring something bizarre like that out.

I wanted to just laugh it up as some sort of bad trip, my brain going haywire in the moments just before I… died. But, there had been something too real about it all, something _appropriate_ I guess about the vision I had seen. Did all parahumans go through the same thing? Unfortunately, it wasn't like I could just email Miss Militia and ask her if she had seen freaky space monsters before she got her powers. She'd probably just dump something like that in her trash folder. I didn't have an account on PHO, but I guess I could always make one and see if anyone there knew anything about it.

My powers were quirky, but they definitely had their perks. The most obvious thing I could do was the regeneration. It seemed pretty fast and I had healed up everything from being disemboweled to breaking my back to even getting shot in the head. I didn't know if there were any limits to it—for some reason my nose hadn't grown back, so there had to be some restrictions. Would I be able to heal back up if I was stomped flat? I hadn't lost any limbs or appendages so far and I didn't know if I could regrow those. What if the thug hadn't just shot me in the head, but instead had cut it right off? Would I just sprout a new one?

I grimaced at the last thought. It would be useful to know just how far I could take my power, but I wasn't about to volunteer getting my body parts hacked off just to test it out. I chewed on my donut, walking along the wooden platform as I watched people windsurfing in the distance.

Besides my healing though, there were subtler aspects to my power I hadn't even realized until now, until I just gone running flat out. Back in my grave, I should have been completely exhausted just from the sheer effort I had to exert digging through all the soil and the horrendous injuries I had taken and healed during my ascent. I should have had to take breaks just to rest myself beneath the surface.

And yet, I was able to keep going and going and I didn't have the slightest trace of fatigue when I had gotten out, like I hadn't spent God knew how many hours just digging out from my own grave. And no matter how many fights I had been through right after—the skinheads, Cricket, and more Empire thugs again—I was still as fresh and energetic as ever. And after all that, I had been even able to run at a full blown sprint without feeling as though I would ever need to slow down or rest, maintaining a pace that would put Olympic marathon runners to shame.

I should have been dead on my feet after all that. A fully-grown man as twice as fit as me couldn't have gone through all that and be as alert as I was now. It wasn't as obvious or as sexy as regeneration but not being able to get tired despite physical exertion had a lot of uses, to say the least. More to the point, when I had been stuck under my grave, I didn't even need _air_ to keep going. I grinned to myself—I wasn't Alexandria, but even she needed to breathe in order to function. I could truthfully say I had her beat on that much, even if she could crush me into pulp.

As cool as all that was, I was avoiding the aspect of my powers that was probably the one that offered the most potential and yet was the most horrifying at the same time. When I had killed Cricket, I had not only claimed her life but somehow her memories and her powers in a literal flash of lightning.

I called up on that sensation again just like I had with the ABB thugs I fooled earlier. It was easier to invoke it this time and the world sprang into blessed clarity once again. I could also feel the vibration just under my throat, the other power Cricket had, but I wasn't going to use _that_ in the middle of all these people. A mass vomiting spell would be fairly conspicuous out here.

But it hadn't just been her powers—I had used those kamas of hers the same way _she_ knew how to use them, with the same techniques and forms she learned starting with her time in the cage, back when she had been Melody and not Cricket.

I frowned—somehow, it felt right to know that her name was Melody, the same way I instinctively knew my own name. I wondered if she knew the names of any of the other Empire capes, like what Hookwolf's real name was. Yeah, he was Brad Meadows but it wasn't like—

 _Holy crap_.

I immediately tried wracking my head for other things that only Cricket should have known and my brain supplied the answer as easily and swiftly as if I had been Melody herself. Favorite color? White. Favorite book series? Maggie Holt. What did she have for breakfast? Bacon, toast, and eggs, with orange juice to top it off.

Alright, those were pretty stupid things to think about, so I started considering more interesting directions. Why she had been at the apartment complex last night? The ABB had recently claimed it and the surrounding area from the Empire a few months ago, and the Empire had been making standard probes into their territory, as part of a plan to eventually recover it for themselves. Where had the nearest Empire safehouse been? There was an abandoned warehouse a few blocks south of the complex, where there was a stash of guns and cash for the taking.

I wasn't literally asking myself questions and I wasn't literally receiving the information back as an answer. All I had to do was think about a subject and the knowledge came to me effortlessly, like I had known it all along, the same way _I_ would access my own memories.

There were some holes in Cricket's knowledge though. Despite her time in the Empire, Cricket hadn't ascended too highly up the ranks as far as capes went. She tended to stick with Stormtiger and Hookwolf and the three of them often did their own thing. I didn't know Kaiser's real name—he must have never revealed himself to her and neither did she know Purity's real name.

And the further back in time I tried to think about things, the murkier and murkier the information I thought I knew became. Despite her power to keep track of her environment, Cricket had probably just forgotten things. It's not like she remembered the name of the Empire thug she had recruited two months ago or even what she ate for dinner last week. My own ability to access Cricket's memories was ultimately limited by _her_ capacity to recall information just before she had died.

All the same, even with those restrictions, I didn't have to be a genius to see the sheer possibilities the goldmine of information I had stumbled onto afforded. I knew the locations of multiple Empire safehouses, the identities of a few Empire capes, the preferred routes and haunts of Empire patrols, and more. So many things that Melody took for granted in her day-to-day life would be immensely valuable to helping take down the Empire. The Protectorate could use the information, couldn't they?

Her powers, her skills, and her memories were mine. And I had a feeling I could replicate the same feat with other capes. If I could do something like this with Cricket, could I do the same with Stormtiger? _Kaiser_?

I just had to kill for it.

I wasn't stupid—even now, I had an idea of the sheer potential of what my real power could bring to bear. With every cape I killed, I would only grow stronger, smarter, and more adept. With each head I took, the next one would be even easier to claim.

I wasn't on par with Eidolon now and not for a long time yet, but would that still hold true a hundred capes later? I could become one of the most powerful capes in the world, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Eidolon and Alexandria. With enough heads, I might even be able to take on the Endbringers.

All I had to do to get there was to become a monster.

By the time I reached a point like that, I wouldn't be getting compared to the Triumvirate. I wouldn't be a hero. If anything, the Slaughterhouse Nine would be more my speed. I had all this power at my disposal—and I would be on the same level of people like Jack Slash or Nilbog if I touched even a fraction of it.

I let out a light giggle when I realized that. It wasn't funny but it made a kind of twisted sense. In all of the fights I had been in, it had been all-or-nothing. I didn't fight like a human being, with restraint or self-control guiding me—instead, I became something baser, more primal, like a beast bearing down on its kill. I didn't have the kind of power that heroes like Legend or Armsmaster were known for, the sort of power that people admired them for.

I had the same type of power that was meant for the worst of villains, the same kind of terrible strength people associated with the Siberian or fucking _Bonesaw_. It would figure that I would get a power like this, rather than something an actual hero could use.

I tossed my empty cup over the railing, out onto the sand below, and continued walking up the Boardwalk. I heard more than one annoyed whisper behind me for littering, but I ignored it.

This was just another thing to add to all the shit I'd faced since this mess began. I didn't know how I was going to deal with my powers, deal with all the things that had happened, but that's something I'd just have to put off for later, something I'd talk to Taylor about.

I idly window shopped as I kept walking, looking at designer dresses I couldn't possibly afford now and the latest fragrances that had just come out. I had kept up with a few of these shops for my modelling classes in the past and I was vaguely interested in seeing how their selection had changed. I got more than one dirty look for coming a little too close a few times, looks that quickly morphed to surprise and unease once they took in my face.

I probably looked more than a little disheveled and scruffy, and the Boardwalk's inhabitants would often try to maintain certain standards. I'd just never been on the receiving end of them before now, but compared to everything else that had happened, I didn't really care if some people were a little put off by my appearance.

As I kept walking, I felt a buzzing pressure building in the back of my head, my neck tingling. I slowed down. The last time I had felt something like that, I had been led right to Cricket—and straight into a fight to the death. But, it was the middle of the morning and I was on the Boardwalk, right next to the PHQ. There was no way an actual cape fight could break out here—not even Lung tried messing around in this part of town.

I cautiously proceeded forward, the pressure steadily rising in intensity as I moved along the wooden platforms. I passed another eight or nine shops before I saw it. With all the people milling about, it would have been easy to miss—just another part of being on the Boardwalk. It was only this aspect of my power and Cricket's enhanced vision that let me see it before it escaped me.

He was tall, dressed in a dark red uniform and wore a cap. An enforcer. He was roughly holding a girl about my height and maybe my age, with a baseball cap and ratty clothes that looked like a reject from a goodwill bin. I didn't see her face, but greasy blonde hair streamed out from under her cap. He was dragging her out of a shop—one of the higher-end clothing stores that I only dreamed I could actually afford to shop at—and out back towards one of the alleys that led into the Docks.

As I got closer, I could hear her talking, the buzzing in my neck growing more insistent.

"—just browsing around, I wasn't making any trouble. Look, I'll just be out of your way—"

He ignored her, just dragging her along towards that alley. I looked around me; no one else was paying attention to the girl and several people just walked right past the scene as if it was an everyday occurrence, nothing unusual to see here. And from what I knew about the Boardwalk, it _wasn't_ that unusual—the stores would buy out the uniformed enforcers to keep out the undesirables from bothering the tourists.

If there was anyone that tried shoplifting or obviously looked like they didn't belong like the girl, the enforcers would take them out back to teach them just why they shouldn't be on the Boardwalk in the first place. I hesitated—she was just a street rat. She'd probably get roughed up a little and told not to come back.

But there was always the possibility of something worse happening.

It wouldn't have been the first time something really bad had happened—enforcers weren't known to be gentle souls. The horror stories were out there and Mom and Dad had always told me to steer well clear of them whenever I was on the Boardwalk.

And even if nothing too bad would happen, she didn't deserve to be beaten up even just because she looked a little shifty. Considering my own current state of dress, I'd be a hypocrite otherwise, even if she _was_ wearing really, really tacky clothing. I reached the pair just before they entered the alley, the vibration in my neck reaching a crescendo as I approached.

"What the hell are you doing?" I projected as much confidence and self-assuredness as I could into that sentence.

The enforcer paused, the girl still held tightly in his hand. He turned to face me, an unpleasant expression on his face that only deepened once he took in my own.

"Nothing that you need to see here. Go back to your shopping," he spoke in a clipped tone that brooked no disagreement.

I narrowed my eyes. "Just what are you planning on doing with her then?"

"Not your concern," he repeated. " _Go back to your shopping_."

He was starting to really piss me off. "I just _made_ it my concern, you creep. She hasn't done anything—just let her go."

He snorted and stepped towards me, coming closer into my personal space, his shoulders flared and his back straight. "Maybe I need to take you with her too."

I stared at him. He was solidly built, maybe a least a foot or so on me, with some serious muscles on his biceps. He probably weighed at least twice as much as me as well and could easily be twice as strong.

And I still could end him in an instant if it came down to it. I could already see the sequences of events in my mind: grab and crush groin, twist and shift around his forward movement, draw knife from concealment at the same time, maneuver arm out of the way, bring knife to throat and—

The girl, who had stayed silent until now, suddenly coughed violently. I caught her eyes for a moment, brilliant bottle-green, just behind the enforcer and if there was a message in them, it was the equivalent of saying Ixnay! as loud as she could.

I exhaled. Right—this was too public. It was one thing to take down some thugs in a barely lit alley with hardly any witnesses. I couldn't kill him here. For that matter, what the hell had I been thinking? More to the point, I didn't need to kill him _anywhere_. I didn't need to resort to flat-out murder as my _first_ option.

There were other forms of combat, other weapons. I could use those instead.

Time to bring out the alpha bitch in me.

"And maybe I'll just scream," I said and he gave me a quizzical look at that. I thought fast, thinking up an angle on the fly. "Big strong man like you, taking two little teenage girls out behind an alley in the middle of the day, right in front of all these people, right in front of the PHQ? What do you think will happen if we scream? What will all these people _think_?"

As I spoke, my voice grew louder and louder with each word, attracting the attention of some nearby shoppers. A few of them came to a stop, as if noticing the scene for the first time.

Beside him, the girl in the baseball cap finally spoke. "This is what, second time you've pulled something like this just in the last week, just taken a girl out back to do your thing?"

The enforcer growled, "What the hell are you—"

"Hmm, fifth actually. Wow, you really _do_ get around. Does it give you a little thrill, too pathetic to actually get some on your own, so you skim off your work here instead? Not like you usually leave them in any condition to say all that much after and with the kind of girls you go after, who'd believe them, am I right?"

"I don't have to listen to—"

"Let me guess: you went through high school, the stereotypical jock, all buff and macho. You thought you'd get a chance to score, but it didn't work out—you'd come on too strong, looked like too much of a creep, and before long, everyone knew that you were the one to avoid."

"Bullshit—"

The girl continued as if she hadn't heard him. By now, several bystanders were listening raptly. Hell, I was listening just as attentively. "So you brooded, angry that none of those bitches would ever give you some, right? You tried something more drastic, but got caught got before it went anywhere. Something like that on your record, you weren't going to make it anywhere decent."

She slowly shook her head in mock sadness. "You just didn't hack it—you had an athletic scholarship lined up but that fell through with your little 'mishap' so you didn't get to college… worked low paying jobs on and off for four, no, six years. And all that time, you just got angrier and angrier. And now, you applied to be an enforcer, so you could actually have a chance to beat people up, let loose some of that pent-up aggression, and actually get _paid_ for it."

The enforcer paled with each passing word she spoke, staring at her disbelievingly. "How in the fuck did you—"

All I could see beneath her cap was a vicious smile. "And now, you get paid to be a professional thug for hire. So, you push the boundaries some, see if you could just get away with it one time, get to do what you never got a chance to do back in high school. Turns out that there's no problem as long it's the 'right' kind of target—the kind people just try not to notice. So you branch out, take more risks, get your little jollies when you can—just got to make sure you don't catch too much attention, that no one takes a real good eye onto you."

By now, the enforcer's grip on her had completely slackened and she spread her arms wide. "But what do you know—looks like we've got quite a few people interested in you now, don't we?"

The enforcer blinked, looking around, noticing the gathered group of people for the first time, about ten people in all. A couple even had their cellphones out, cameras flashing as they took a picture of him.

He snarled, whirling back around to look at the girl, fists clenched so hard that his veins popped out.

"Fuck!"

She just gave a wide smile in response and surrounded by everyone as we were, all he could do was painfully grit out, "Just get the fuck out of here, both of you."

He pounded his fist hard against a nearby wall, startling a couple of passerbys as he stalked away. After a few seconds, the bystanders dissipated, returning to join the rest of the crowd browsing and shopping along the Boardwalk. I just looked at the girl, then the enforcer's retreating back, and then back at the girl again in incredulity, my neck buzzing the entire time.

Just… God damn. I almost felt sorry for him by the end there.

Almost.

"Fuck, I'm going to get a really bad migraine later for that," the girl muttered, stepping out from the alley entrance and back onto the Boardwalk itself.

"Are you alright?" I asked, carefully checking her for any signs of injury. I didn't see anything too bad—there was a light blue smear along her left forearm that would probably develop into a bruise later.

"I'm good," she said cheerfully, taking off her cap and raising her head to look at me. It revealed a pale face with intelligent, bottle-green eyes, with a smattering of freckles across her nose, framed with tousled dirty-blonde hair. She looked me up and down, a vulpine grin growing at the corners of her lips.

"Name's Lisa. Who're you?"

* * *

 **The description of the Boardwalk, as well as of the PHQ is heavily drawn from 1.3 of** _ **Worm**_ **. In case it wasn't clear, Emma experienced a runner's high when she was sprinting earlier. I'm not sure that I've ever actually experienced one myself, but I asked a friend of mine to describe her experience of it, which is where the description came from, although hers wasn't as intense as Emma's here.**


	7. Forge 1-7

**Forge 1.7**

I studied the girl, Lisa, more carefully. She was a little taller than me and her hair wasn't actually dirty blonde all the way through—it faded into light blue streaks towards the tips. Her hair was slightly greasy and more than a little undone. Between that and the state of her clothes, she looked like another down-on-their-luck teen on the streets—someone I could have easily walked right by without a second glance, just another face in the background.

And yet, this close to her, the buzzing in my neck was at its strongest and the only other time I had felt something like this was when I had been face to face with Cricket. I had been drawn to Lisa the same way I had been drawn to Cricket, guided by that same force. This was a part of my powers I had completely forgotten about until now.

Could she really be a cape? She certainly didn't _look_ like it, but the same could easily be said for me. Appearances weren't everything—you'd hardly be able to tell that I had killed thirteen people just looking at me.

I wasn't sure how to handle this. I didn't really keep up with cape culture the way some of my other friends did—I mean, sure, I knew the basics. You'd have to be living under a rock if you didn't know about the Triumvirate or the Slaughterhouse Nine, or in Brockton Bay, about Kaiser, Lung, Miss Militia, Armsmaster, or New Wave. I knew at least that much, even if I didn't know all the ins and outs about the latest and greatest new cape to come out, or who all of the Brockton Bay Wards were.

All the same, I was pretty sure that outing a cape was something you just didn't _do_. I knew that much about capes, if nothing else. I may well have come across a cape's public identity and she wouldn't appreciate it if I showed that I knew.

Hence the awkwardness.

"Emma," I said finally. "My name is Emma. Was that guy earlier really…"

Lisa sighed. "Unfortunately, he probably was."

I shook my head in disgust. "Are all of them like that?"

Lisa frowned. "The way I see it, you've got three types of enforcers. The first make up the largest number of them—the most they'll do to you is tune you up a little, take you out back and tell you not to come back. They're the uniformed version of bouncers, I guess."

"After that, you've got the thugs. They're a lot more eager to get physical with you—breaking your fingers for shoplifting, beating you until you're unconscious, taking you out back and dumping you in the alley. They're the ones where most of the stories come from and there are enough of them that you want to stay clear of enforcers entirely."

She leaned forward. "Then you've got the really _twisted_ fucks. I'm talking monsters for hire. The only reason they're not out doing shit like serial rape in the suburbs is because it's safer to do it as an enforcer if you're careful about it. Like the one you saw earlier. They're pretty rare and they know how to blend in. I've heard stories of people that have been killed by enforcers—a kid a few months ago froze to death because two enforcers beat the crap out of him and tossed him over the platforms onto the sand and it was high tide that night. Not that anyone gave a shit."

"And they got away with that?" I asked incredulously.

She shrugged. "It's Brockton Bay. You're living in a shithole where you've got a flaming rage dragon controlling one part of the city, a Nazi with a metal fetish owning another, and a druggie with delusions of grandeur holding onto a scrap of what's left. A raped whore or two or a beat-up panhandler on the Boardwalk doesn't really ping anyone's radar."

I shook my head. "That's fucked up."

"It is what it is," she said simply. "It's the way it's always been, all the way back to ancient Egypt and Rome—either you're the right kind of person or you're the wrong kind. And if you're not the right kind, why would anyone care?"

I looked at her oddly. "Ancient Egypt and Rome?"

"Well, you can't beat the classics, right?"

"I guess." Maybe I was underestimating the education level of the average homeless person. "That was, uh, pretty awesome just now with that enforcer though."

Lisa laughed lightly. "It was, wasn't it?" She looked at me curiously. "You know, most people wouldn't have done anything. This kind of thing happens often enough on the Boardwalk. Why'd you stop to help?"

I couldn't exactly tell her that I had only noticed her to begin with because she was a parahuman. But, there had been a more fundamental reason why I had intervened, something that struck a little too close to home. "I… I didn't like the idea of someone just being ignored like that."

Lisa's smile faded, her eyes briefly going sad. "Fuck, you've been through some serious shit, haven't you?"

I blinked in surprise. How did the hell did she know that? Then again, between my lacking a nose and my appearance overall, it probably wasn't too hard to guess. I still smelled of dried blood if you paid close enough attention. I looked at her uneasily—I didn't need anyone cluing in on some of the things I had gotten involved with.

"Listen," Lisa said. "You did me a favor helping out with that creep. I figure I owe you, Look—I'm getting kind of hungry plus I got to find some way to pay you back so…"

She put her cap back on. "How about we get something to eat? On me."

I hesitated. For a first impression, Lisa seemed pretty easy-going overall, I had to admit. She certainly didn't strike me as all that threatening and I _could_ go for something more filling than just a coffee and a donut. The idea of being able to sit down, eat, and relax really appealed to me right now.

At the same time, she had just come out of a store hundred times out of her league where she had been doing _something_ suspicious and I got the feeling it wasn't the first time she had done so—she didn't exactly scream "upstanding citizen" to me. And for as nice as she was right now, she had shown that she was easily capable of out-alpha-bitching me in a heartbeat, seeing what she had done to that enforcer. She was also a cape and I had no idea what she could do—which made her dangerous.

Lisa smiled that foxlike smile again. "Come on, it'll be my treat," she said teasingly, her bottle-glass green eyes sparkling.

Dammit, that smile was just not fair.

I shrugged. "Yeah, why not?"

* * *

As nice as the Boardwalk was, unless you were rolling in cash, no one could possibly afford to shop there all the time. You got quality for what you paid for, but you definitely had to _pay_ quite a bit to get it. As you went further north past the Boardwalk though, as the shops grew less frequent and gave way to more and more sandy beach, you'd eventually come across the other mainstay in Brockton Bay. You had to take a shortcut across a few connected fields, but you'd be upon the Market soon enough.

The Market—the Lord Street Market if you used the full name, but no one called it that—was the place to go shopping for in north Brockton Bay if you didn't want to want to break the bank. Stalls lined every corner, with practically everything you could think of: Boardwalk overstock marked down seventy-five to ninety percent, tacky knick-knacks for the tourists, racks filled with clothing, brand-new books being sold half off, food stalls left and right, and more.

Anyone could rent out a stall, and many people preferred doing to garage sales if you lived this far north in Brockton Bay. The Market definitely wasn't as organized or eye-catching the way the Boardwalk was, but if you were patient, you could find stuff often just as good for a fraction of the price.

That's where Lisa and I were heading across, leaving the Boardwalk behind us in the distance as I trailed close behind her. I didn't know what day it was, but I guessed it must have been a weekday—if this were a weekend morning, the Market would be significantly more packed than it was, but it was still fairly crowded all the same.

Lisa was humming something underneath her breath as we weaved through the mass of people, a slow and catchy tune, her baseball cap bobbing up and down with every step she took.

"What is that?" I asked.

She stopped humming. "Just some Bob Dylan. Wigwam, you know?"

"I didn't think you'd be a sixties fan."

She waved her hand. "Oh, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie—all the real big folk musicians from the sixties, love 'em all." She flashed me that same smile again and I was starting to think it was her go-to expression. "You've got more _contemporary_ tastes?"

What kind of street kid used words like "contemporary?" Or was into Bob Dylan and Joan Baez for that matter? "Sort of. My Mom's a big Bob Dylan buff though I can't really say the same for me. I mean, I like a few of his songs, but it's not the kind of thing I can listen to all day."

Lisa hmmed lightly. "I'm guessing you're not quite into the same music as other teens our age. You don't look like a Justin Bieber or One Direction fan to me."

I made a face. "God, no. I mean, I don't mind some of the boy bands that are out there, but most of them aren't my thing." I made a little embarrassed noise. "My preferences in music are kind of weird to be honest. I'm really into eighties music."

Lisa looked at me carefully, her eyes narrowed with concentration. "Classical too? That's certainly an eclectic combination."

I looked at her, surprised. "Yeah. Dead on, actually. How did you guess?"

She gave me a mysterious smile in response. "I've got an eye for these kind of things."

We made more idle conversation for the next few minutes as we walked past the stalls and I eased into the familiar pattern quickly enough. It was nice being able to talk about anything in particular and not having to worry about what came next. In many ways, talking with Lisa reminded me of Taylor, before her mother had died—no topic was barred and we would spend hours talking about anything we wanted to, however we wanted to entertain ourselves. Lisa had nothing on Taylor when it came to sheer energy though.

As we talked, what I noticed the most about Lisa was just how oddly _perceptive_ she was. She seemed to have an almost automatic in on the kinds of things I liked, the sort of bands and movies I preferred, at times nearly completing my sentences for me. It was kind of spooky actually.

And for someone that had been kicked out of a high-end clothing store and was apparently living on the streets, she had a surprisingly sophisticated air about her—it came from her stance, her tone, and her vocabulary. I mean, who used words like "eclectic" in casual conversation?

Still, I enjoyed being able to do nothing but talk about nothing of importance. It… took my mind off of things.

"Okay, okay," I said, laughing after hearing Lisa's opinion on the newest Johnny Depp movie—she wasn't a fan, to say the least. "We must have passed twenty food stalls by now. Just where are we going to go eat anyway?"

Lisa pointed out towards the beach, past the edge of the Market. I saw where she was aiming at and made a disgusted noise. "Really? You want to eat there?"

Lisa started walking again. "It's not too bad and it's got a nice view of the beach. Don't tell me you've never been."

I had and my body had been already regretting it by the first bite. "You know that their burgers taste like they have more grease than actual meat in them, right?"

Lisa grinned. "It's a Bay classic. Come on, going there every once in a while won't kill you." She paused before clarifying, "Probably."

Fugly Bobs was a fast-food place that overlooked the beach, sitting on the far north end of the Market, sitting in a combination restaurant / beach bar / shack set-up. Pretty much anyone who lived in Brockton Bay had eaten there at least once, to see what all the fuss was about. They were infamous for their incredibly greasy, oversized burgers, packed with so much fat that eating there with any kind of regularity was a fast one-way trip to heart disease. Besides their standard burgers, they also sold the truly massive Fugly Bob Challenger as their specialty dish. Like the name implied, if you bought it, you were challenged to finish it and if you did, it was on the house.

Almost everybody paid.

We agreed on ordering a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a couple of sodas. I had been about to take out some of the cash I still had but Lisa had stopped me, insisting that she had already said she was going to pay for the both of us. There weren't too many people ordering right now, so we got our food quickly and settled on a table outside on the patio. We were off in a fairly secluded corner, but not a lot of people were at the tables outside anyway.

We split the cheeseburger down the middle, the whole thing easily the size of an entire plate, each taking a half for ourselves.

"Bon appétit," Lisa said and we dug in.

"I feel really guilty eating this," I confessed after a minute, picking up one of my fries.

"Why?"

"Well, I've been trying to stay on a diet recently, for my modeling…"

Fuck. I could see my reflection off one of the nearby windows, my nose-less face held in profile. Not like modeling was in my future anymore, not much point trying to diet for something that would never happen. And it wasn't recently—it was nine months ago.

Talking with Lisa, I had settled into a comfortable place, almost fooling myself into thinking that I was just another teen out and about, hanging out with her friend on the Boardwalk, eating at Fugly Bobs—all the kinds of things normal teens did, all things I had done hundreds of times with Taylor.

Except I wasn't with Taylor right now and I wasn't a normal teenager anymore, not now, not with… all the things that had happened. Talking with Lisa had diverted my attention from all of the things I still needed to face. It had been nice, but it had been a distraction all the same.

Lisa prodded me. "Hey, you got kind of quiet there."

I forced a chuckle. "It's nothing. I was just reminded of something else."

"You were a model, you said?" Lisa asked, chewing on her sandwich.

"Classes only. I was planning on applying to a few agencies after I turned fifteen."

"So you're fourteen then?"

I frowned. That was a good question. Technically, I had died not long after I had turned fourteen and had woken up barely a few hours later, at least from my own perspective. Did that mean I was still fourteen? On the other hand, nine months had passed by while I was six feet under and it was past what my birthday should have been. Did that make me fifteen then?

On the flipside though, looking at my reflection, if you ignored the state of my hair, my clothes, and the fact that I was missing a nose, I looked the same the last I remembered. So maybe I still counted as fourteen overall? This was a more complicated issue than I thought.

"Whoa," Lisa said after a few seconds passed without me saying anything. "If I knew it was going to be that tough of a question, I wouldn't have asked. Call it fourteen-and-a-half?"

"Let's go with that," I agreed. Thankfully, she didn't say anything about my currently non-existent chances of a modelling agency picking me up now that I looked like this. "How old are you?"

"I turn sixteen in a couple of months," Lisa replied, biting into her fry.

"Happy birthday in advance?"

Lisa grinned. "Thanks."

"So, you're on the Boardwalk often?" I asked.

"It's pretty much the place to be in Brockton Bay, don't you think?" Lisa replied.

"I guess. My parents probably wouldn't like it if I did all my shopping there though."

Lisa just gave me a _look_ and I cringed—very smooth, Emma. Obviously, she hadn't been _shopping_ at the time when I came across her. And if her parents had any say at all in her life as it was right now, she wouldn't be on the streets to begin with.

"Don't worry about it," Lisa said. "It sounds like your parents are important to you."

"Yeah." I sighed, wondering how I was going to find out where they were. I didn't even know if they were in the same state anymore. "They are."

"What do they do?"

"My mom used to work in finance. She stopped a couple years after I was born."

"And your dad's an attorney?"

"… Yes. How did you figure that out?"

Lisa shrugged. "It seemed like it fit."

She was awfully good at these guesses. That made me wonder…

"You ever think which cape you'd want to be?" I asked casually.

Lisa shook her head. "Not really. I figure life's complicated enough as it is."

"Really? You wouldn't like to able to shoot lasers out of your eyes or anything like that? You could have just melted that enforcer if you wanted to."

Lisa laughed, taking a bite out of her sandwich. "Not quite. What about you?"

I pursed my lips. "Alexandria's the obvious answer, isn't it?"

"Come on, everyone says that," Lisa scoffed.

"What?" I said defensively. "Everyone says it because it's _right_."

Lisa waved a hand. "Eidolon could take her easily."

"Maybe, but Alexandria's hotter."

"Point," Lisa conceded. "You can't deny that Eidolon has her beat when it comes to pure power though."

"I guess so. Powers would make things a lot easier to deal with things."

"One would hope," Lisa replied. "The right kind might be nice to have."

Looking at her, I imagined that her power must help her in her more _illicit_ activities. It wasn't clear to me what it was though.

"You run into enforcers often out there?"

"Not really. I know how to stay out of their way as much as I can."

"That sounds like a good policy," I said. "That guy before…" I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened to Lisa. It was too close to what those Empire thugs had wanted to do to me.

Lisa squeezed my hand. "Hey, I came out of it okay and you helped out. It's not my first rodeo, you know?"

The thought that Lisa had come across others like that enforcer was disturbing on multiple levels. "It's still kind of fucked up to think about. And that no one seems to do anything about it."

"It's easy to ignore what you don't want to see," Lisa replied, swirling a fry in ketchup sauce. "Human beings are very good at convincing themselves that a problem isn't there, just compartmentalize it away. And if it's someone else's issue on top of it, it's even simpler."

Again with the oddities. Lisa _really_ sounded off for someone stuck on the streets—too educated, too perceiving. Maybe I was stereotyping against homeless people, but I doubted many were like Lisa, parahuman or not. I was curious about her circumstances, but I didn't know if she would be offended if I asked.

She looked at me peculiarly. "You know, the way you were staring at that creep earlier, I almost thought you were going to try to kill him or something."

I didn't say anything in response to that. Lisa's eyes briefly widened and there was an awkward pause.

"Well," Lisa said finally, "I'm flattered you'd go to bat for me like that, but you don't look like the kind of person to do something like that. Wouldn't… have guessed you to be the type."

She left the implications of what "type" I was unstated, not that they needed to be spelled out.

I remained silent, eying Lisa. Just who was this girl exactly? The more I thought about the things she had said ever since I had met her, the more I realized I actually knew almost nothing at all about her. We had talked a lot about a number of random things, but anytime the conversation would seem to drift towards who she was or what she did, she had deflected it without me paying much attention. I hadn't even noticed that until now.

And meanwhile, she had had done a lot of figuring out about me—about my parents, my hobbies, likes, dislikes, even possibly some of the things I had gotten caught up with. She seemed to have a way of uncovering all kinds of things about me, but I hadn't heard the slightest concrete fact about her. She knew a lot more about me than I knew about her.

Now that I realized it, it was starting to irritate me. Had she been playing me the whole time, using some kind of power I hadn't noticed?

"And you don't seem fit a lot of expectations either," I said flatly. "What's your story anyway?"

Lisa seemed to have recovered from the possible revelation that I was homicidally inclined fairly quickly. "Oh, I'm just your typical Brocktonite ne'er-do-well. I do this and that, go here and there."

"So what were you doing in that clothing store?"

Lisa smiled. "This and that."

I glanced at her, annoyed. "Really."

"Really."

"And where were you before you were on the streets to begin with?"

She leaned back in her chair. "Here and there."

Okay, the run-around was beginning to piss me off. "You'd have to be pretty stupid to think that's actually an answer to my question."

Something flashed through Lisa's eyes when I said "stupid" but it was gone before I could make it out. "You know, you don't talk like a typical person out on the streets," I continued.

Lisa laughed, but there was an ugly undertone to it. "You'd be surprised what you hear on the streets these days. You can get quite the education."

She peered at me intently. "For example, there's been some word up the grapevine that something major went down in the Docks super early this morning. A lot of it's still hush-hush, but people are saying that the ABB did a serious number on the Empire. Maybe even killed one of their capes."

I froze. News about Cricket had spread _that_ fast? Shit, my face had been uncovered back at that fight and some of the thugs had gotten away. With my appearance, I was easily recognizable—how many nose-less red-headed teens could there be in Brockton Bay anyway?

"They're saying it was some new ABB cape no one's seen before, some kind of regenerator. Left a trail of bodies behind—all torn up and mangled, like an animal had taken them down. Doubt the PRT or the Protectorate's going to be too happy with them." There was a trace of her foxlike smile again, but it wasn't pleasant this time. "Know anything about that?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She knew I was a parahuman the whole time—could she sense them the same way I could? She even had an idea of what I could do and worse, she knew what I had _done_. My fingers bit into my palm as I clenched my fists. I glared at Lisa, staring at the curve of the knowing smirk on her face. Then I came to a decision.

"I think we're done here," I said coldly, abruptly getting off my chair to leave.

I walked away, down the patio and back towards the Market. I was made it several steps away before I heard a sigh and a whispered "Fuck me" coming from behind me.

"Emma! Emma, wait!"

I turned around to see Lisa approaching, looking apologetic.

I narrowed my eyes. "What do you want?"

Lisa sighed. "Look, I… I was being really bitchy just now. I know I went over the line there. I get that—that's on me, my bad. I'm sorry and I shouldn't done that."

I didn't reply and she took that as a sign to keep talking. "I'll admit that I knew you were a parahuman the whole time—and that I know that you already know that I'm one. I could tell that you had some sort of sensory ability." Her voice turned serious. "You know, that alone is a pretty dangerous power—you could out any cape in civvies you wanted to. A lot of people would be very unhappy if they knew you could do that."

I kept my gaze locked onto her. "What are you? Some Empire flunky or something? Were you trying to manipulate me the whole time—get some information for your buddies?" I took a step toward her. "Was this whole thing a setup?"

Lisa waved her hands. "No, I was serious when I said was on the streets. I'm just a parahuman, not a cape—I don't go put on a costume in the middle of the night and beat people up. And I didn't let an enforcer get ahold me for some kind of _setup_. Besides, if I was an Empire cape, do you really think I'd be cruising the Boardwalk for a hit, especially looking like _this_?" She waved a hand down towards her jeans, torn up and dirtied as they were.

I examined her carefully, bringing up Cricket's memories again. The only teenage Empire cape that Melody knew was Rune and her build was completely different from Lisa's. And Kaiser wasn't in the habit of having his capes moonlight as homeless vagrants anyway.

"Fine," I said grudgingly. "I can buy that you're not Empire then."

Lisa looked at me oddly. "How do you know what the other Empire capes look like out of costume?"

Again with the 'guesses.' I exhaled sharply. "Now, that's the other issue I'm having with you. You're really, really good when it comes to guessing things about me. You might even say _unnaturally_ good at it. Is that what you do? You're some kind of psychic or something?"

She smiled. "Maybe, maybe not."

I closed my eyes for a moment. "Goddamn, do you ever give a straight answer?" I muttered underneath my breath before opening my eyes again. "Okay, you knew I was parahuman, you took me out to get something to eat, and then you blew up in my face all of a sudden. What the hell is your deal?"

"I really did just want to pay you back, Emma," Lisa replied. "You did me a solid with that creep and you seemed like a nice girl… it's… I don't like it when people try to pry into my past. And I reacted badly for that."

I scoffed. "So, instead you pry into other people's business instead?"

She gave me a sheepish grin. "Never said I wasn't a hypocrite. Street rat, remember? Honesty and fairness isn't exactly my middle name."

"You realize that as much as you know about me from either what I told you or what you 'guessed,' I know almost nothing about you?" I shook my head. "And you obviously know a lot, including some seriously fucked up things. Did you know that from the beginning? What the _fuck_ were you thinking bringing up all of that shit?"

Her expression turned vaguely shame-faced and she didn't say anything for several long seconds. "Look… I'll admit I had an idea of what you did. And I really _was_ grateful that you helped out with that guy—parahuman or not, most people wouldn't have cared. A lot of people saw me and just walked by. You didn't."

She exhaled loudly. "I saw the way you were looking at that enforcer—you weren't going to _try_ to kill him, you knew you could flat out do it, because you've done it before. Add that to what people were saying on the streets earlier, putting two and two together from there wasn't hard. And with everything you said and the way you were acting… I thought you had just triggered, that you needed someone to talk to."

I looked at her quizzically. "Triggered?"

"Yeah, makes sense that you wouldn't know about it. I didn't even know what they were for a while either. It's something only capes and parahuman specialists talk about. It's not really public knowledge. When you got your powers, I'm guessing you were having an extremely shitty day?"

I thought back to the – the alley, right before I saw those creatures, before I woke up in my own grave. "The worst."

Lisa nodded. "Not everyone can get powers, but the ones that can? Before they get their powers, they have to go through some serious stuff—fight-or-flight instincts taken to the edge, taken past your limits, worst day of your life shit. Your family dies in a car accident, someone tries to beat you to death, stuff like that. They call it a trigger event."

I thought about that, the implications of it. " _All_ parahumans go through that?"

"Without exception. Doesn't matter if we're talking about Nilbog or Alexandria, Kaiser or Miss Militia—if someone's a parahuman, that means that something incredibly fucked up happened in their life before they got their powers in the first place. Behind every hero and villain is a victim of some kind."

"So, that's what it was," I whispered, thinking about the monsters I had seen in the vision. When… _they_ had attacked me, when I had broken and _died_ , my powers had been unlocked somehow. And _every_ cape went through something equally as bad to get their powers? Even someone like Alexandria or Eidolon?

"I've been there before," Lisa said. "I know what that's like—to be pushed to your limits, to have no one at your back. I know I would have wanted someone to help me out on a day as shitty as the one I had when I triggered. I… get that you've done some stuff, but I'm guessing you didn't have a choice in it. Triggers are like that. You did me a favor when you had no reason to, so I thought I'd try to help you out. You look like you needed someone to talk to. I wasn't trying to play you or anything like that and I'm sorry for fucking it up."

I took a deep breath. That… wasn't entirely unreasonable. Wasn't that what I had been trying to find the entire time, someone to talk to, to find someone who could help me deal? That's why I had gone to Taylor's house earlier—I needed to just _talk_ and not have to be terrified thinking about the fucking _alley_ every five seconds.

I looked at Lisa, her expression uncharacteristically serious, no trace of the smile that you might have thought was permanently stuck on her face. Did it make sense to unload everything on a homeless teen I had barely met, whose power could very well be _mind-reading_? It seemed so silly and stupid—so why the hell was I considering it seriously?

If she really could read my mind, then it wasn't like I had anything to say that she didn't already know. Of course, there was every possibility she wasn't actually psychic, but… this wasn't about her, what she could figure out. This was about me. Maybe this was a stupid idea. But right now, alone as I was, I had no clue what the smart or stupid thing to do even was. Maybe I needed to _act_ , not just sit here without any idea of where to go, of what to do.

I didn't have to spill everything. Just enough to try to get a handle on things, to try to see if I could get some perspective. She was a parahuman too—so she probably had an idea of what these things were like.

"Alright," I said finally. "I'm… not going into any details. But I guess talking could help."

We walked over away from Fugly Bobs, towards one of the more secluded spots that had a view of the sea. We left our unfinished food, but I wasn't in the mood for eating anymore. I rested my elbows against the railing, watching the surf splash against the beach. Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes.

"Before… before _it_ happened, you have to understand the kind of person I was," I began, still staring at the sea. "Like I told you, I was taking modeling classes. I still had…" I waved a hand towards the ruins of my nose. "I went to parties, I was obsessed over all the latest fashion trends, my Dad and I would argue over whether or not I could do horseback riding and ballet on top of my modeling, I'd listen to Pat Benatar all day, I'd get my nails done on the weekends, and my biggest worry was if I was going to make through algebra in high school."

Lisa didn't say anything, so I kept speaking. "I had – have a best friend. Her name's Taylor. I've known her pretty much all of my life. She's a motormouth, a cape geek, reads all the time, and sometimes she annoys me with how hyper she can be and I love her like a sister. We'd watch movies until three am in the middle of the morning, turn on the music too loud in my house until my parents would yell at us to turn it off, go bicycling around the neighborhood, just—I was a _normal_ _girl_ , do you get what I'm saying?"

"I understand," Lisa said quietly.

"Before my trigger I guess, that's all I knew. For me, that's the way the world was. Everything wasn't sunshine and roses but things were… fine for the most part. The sun came up, the sun came down, the world made sense and everything was just copacetic. All the _shit_ ," I slashed a hand out towards the sea, "that's out there didn't occur to me, wasn't something I thought about. Maybe I'd see a news report or two, but if it wasn't happening to me, then it just wasn't _happening_."

"Out of sight, out of mind."

"Exactly. So when… when _it_ happened, I didn't have any sort of way to understand what the hell was happening. It didn't make sense—things like that didn't happen to me. It's the kind of thing you hear about on TV with those stupid news anchors, it's not like it's real life." I paused. "Trust me, I know how stupid that sounds saying it out loud right now."

I inhaled deeply before continuing. "So, I didn't know how to cope, it wasn't something I could make sense of. I didn't have any kind of experience to draw upon to understand it, to make it seem real. So… I didn't. I made stuff up, I looked for outs that didn't even exist. I kept wishing for someone, some _thing_ to make it stop, to make it all go away. And I kept deluding myself like that, not even…" I clenched my fingers tight against the wooden railing. "… I was just stuck there, not even _doing_ anything, as if I could wish it away."

I laughed, in a short, harsh bark. "Obviously, that didn't work."

"So, I took it and I prayed it was over." I closed my eyes. "Except it wasn't. And when it was going to happen _again_ , that's when I stopped being able to handle it. That's – that's when I broke, when I lost myself. I don't think I really cared if I lived or died at that point, I just… I wasn't going to just let it happen again."

I felt tears gathering at the edges of my eyes and I angrily wiped them away. "You have to understand—I became… something else at that point. I'm not sure if you can even say I was a person anymore. It wasn't… pretty what I did. And the fucked up thing is that those were just the first, that was just the _beginning_ of all this, like the world kept having to throw shit my way. And every step of the way, it just became easier to keep letting go little by little. If being human meant the world still made sense, and the world _didn't_ anymore, then why would I stay human? I mean, what the _fuck_ was even the point?"

I pounded my fists against the railing, my vision beginning to blur as a lump brought its way up into my throat. "Goddammit, I was a regular girl! Shit like that wasn't supposed to happen to me! I was, fuck—"

I broke off into a heaving sob, the words slipping from my grasp. I blubbered and wailed and after a moment, Lisa silently took me into a one-armed hug, letting me rest my head against hers.

* * *

After a few minutes, I managed to master myself. I broke from Lisa's embrace, wiping away my tears in embarrassment. "You must think I'm a real crybaby or something. Sorry for ruining your shirt."

Lisa looked down at her shirt, now stained with tears. " _This_ shirt? Trust me, it was way past its expiration date long before you were here."

I laughed in response, the lump in my throat gone. Crying like that and being hugged had felt… cathartic. I don't think I was _okay_ yet, but I felt a lot better than I had before. Lisa hadn't exactly said anything when I was talking, and I don't know if I had really been thinking anything new, but being able to spill my guts to someone else had been nice.

We walked in amiable silence for a little bit, heading further north and away from the Market.

"You can ask, you know."

I looked over at Lisa. "Was yours just as bad?"

Lisa exhaled. "That's a difficult question to answer. It's shitty for everyone and it sounds like you had a real bad one. For me, it was more like the conclusion of something long-term I hadn't noticed, something that caught me off-guard."

I hesitated for a moment before asking, "Why haven't you tried going to the Wards or something? They'd be able to give you housing."

She laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. "Trust me when I say that becoming a Ward or joining the Protectorate is one of the last things I want. They've got a lot of conditions and stipulations you have to agree to for that to even be possible and a lot of it's stuff I don't want to touch at all."

I wanted to push further, but I stopped myself. I didn't know her situation and to be honest, I barely knew her. She was already something of a landmine when I had tried prying earlier and I had seen firsthand the kind of viciousness she could bring to bear when she was motivated. I had no intention of being on the receiving end of _that_. It wasn't exactly fair that there was this imbalance in knowledge, but I couldn't deny that she had done me a favor just now.

"I guess powers aren't what everyone makes them out to be," I said finally.

"No, they aren't," Lisa agreed.

"All I want to do is see my parents again," I said, staring at the clouds. "I have no idea where they are or what they're doing. I just… I _need_ to see them."

Lisa smiled sympathetically. "Dealing with the first day is always the hardest."

The first day? It had been nine months ago when I had "triggered" according to Lisa. Today had just been the day I had woken up, not when I had triggered. But the experience was still fresh in my mind. Did today still count as the "first day?"

"First day since your trigger," she clarified when I didn't respond. Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "You mean you _didn't_ trigger recently?"

Like my age, that was a hard question to answer. From my own perspective, it had only been a few hours. In the real world, it had been over nine months. Depending on how you sliced it, I had either had my trigger event very recently or not recently at all.

"Both? Recently _and_ a long time ago—months?" She looked at me oddly. "What the hell?"

"It's… complicated," I said.

Lisa looked at me closely for a couple of seconds and I felt slightly uncomfortable under her gaze. She looked away, murmuring to herself, "…triggered recently in subjective time, but not in objective time…Amnesia? Time travel? No, that's not it..."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you done trying to read my mind again?"

She remained silent for a few more seconds before her face shot up to meet mine, her eyes wide. "No way. No fucking way. _No fucking way_." She backed away from me, finger raised to point at me.

I didn't know what her deal was. "What?"

She stammered, shaking her head. "That's – fuck, it's just fucking – how the fucking fuck could that fucking… what the _fuck_ , that's fucking fucked!"

Wow. I couldn't help it. I sniggered at the sight of her—she looked _ridiculous_ , mouth agape with her tongue almost hanging out as she pointed a trembling finger in my direction. I brought up a hand to stifle my laughter. "Okay, I've never heard the F-word used in that many ways before, but is there something you want to clue me in on?"

She spluttered incoherently for a few more seconds before she found her voice. "You came back from the fucking _dead_!"

I blinked. "Oh. You mean that."

She gave a hoarse laugh. "Yes, _that_."

I awkwardly shrugged. "Powers are weird? It's kind of the reason why I'm in the situation I'm in now. The time between my trigger and my… awakening was longer than I thought it would be. People and things aren't where I thought they'd be."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Lisa kept muttering to herself, pointedly not looking at me. She finally shook her head. "You know what? Forget it. Not touching that. Leaving aside that you pulled off your own version of the fucking _Resurrection_ , let's go back to what you were saying earlier. Something about your parents?"

"Yeah." I sighed. "It's been a while and when I went to our house, it turns out they moved after I… died. And I have no idea where they are, if they're even in the city anymore."

"Why don't you ask around where your dad used to work at?"

"What do you mean?"

She arched an eyebrow. "You said your dad was an attorney, right? So he obviously worked at some law firm. And unless he suddenly decided to change careers, he's working at another one right now. You could either call up or go visit his old one and they should know which firm he's with now."

That wasn't a bad idea, actually. I hadn't even thought of that before I had run off straight towards Taylor's house after talking to Alice and George.

Lisa looked at me curiously. "You don't have anyone else from Brockton Bay you can contact besides your parents?"

"Well, there's my sister I guess," I said, after a moment's hesitation. "Anne. She was attending the local college, but she might have moved away with my parents and transferred out by now. She was still with us at home, since we lived so close to the campus."

"It can't hurt to check it out. And your friend, Taylor's her name?"

"Yeah. I went by her house earlier, but no one was home. She must have been out. I figured I'd go back later in the day."

Lisa rapped her fingers against the railing. "It's simple then, isn't it? You can go the public library and look up both your dad's old law firm and your sister's college, see if you can't also find both of them online. Your dad's old law firm will know where he's working now—that'll get you started in the right direction. Then you can scope out the college—see if your sister isn't still a student there and if not, you can probably find someone there who knows which school she changed to. The registrar, an RA, one of her classmates—someone will know. With all that, you should have a way of contacting your family. By the time you're done, your friend will likely be back home."

Was it that easy? What Lisa had just done was take all of the pieces I had already possessed and put them into place, show me that I had the options before me the entire time. What I had been lacking from the beginning was any semblance of an actual _plan_ to get out of this mess I was in. Instead, I had been blundering around from place to place, moving without any clear sense of direction or purpose, going from conflict to conflict and I only just recently come up with the vague goal of meeting Taylor and finding out where my parents were.

"That… that makes a lot of sense," I admitted.

Lisa grinned. "I always make sense."

She rummaged around in her jeans pocket, taking out the receipt for our food from earlier, as well as a pen. She quickly scribbled something on the back against the palm of her hand before holding it out to me. "Hey, I got to jet, but I just wanted you to have this."

I took the scrap of paper, turning it over to see a ten-digit phone number. "Is this your—"

"Phone number? Yeah, though it's only going to be good for a week, two tops but that's pushing it."

I looked up at her. "Why only a week or two?"

Lisa wiggled her hand. "Eh, you know how it is."

"Oh." I guess the phone or the service wasn't actually hers to begin with. "I don't, uh, have—"

"A phone on you? It's cool, you can probably find me on the Boardwalk whenever. I'm there pretty much all day usually."

"Right." I had forgotten that I could just pick out Lisa in the crowds if it came down to it.

She gestured back south, towards the Market. "If you want to head to the library by the way, there's a bus stop further back, just north of the Boardwalk."

I pocketed the paper and took a deep breath. "Thanks, Lisa… You were right. Talking did help."

Lisa smirked. "I _do_ tend to know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, waving a hand.

"Listen," she said, placing a hand over mine, "anytime you just want to talk, hang out, whatever, just… give me a call alright?"

"I can do that. I'll… see you later?"

"Later," she agreed, before she started walking away, opposite the ocean and out towards the Docks, passing through the nearly empty road.

I began making my own way back down towards the Market. I was only a few yards in when I couldn't help but call out, "Hey! Are you actually psychic?"

Lisa looked back at me across the street, her vulpine grin coming out in full force again. "Girl's got to have her secrets, right?"

With that, she turned around and ran off, disappearing into one of the many alleys in this part of town.

* * *

 **Lisa's description of enforcers is drawn from her interlude in 8.x. The description of the Market is drawn from 4.1 of** _ **Worm**_ **, with the description of Fugly Bobs drawn from 4.2. Lisa's description of trigger events is drawn from 4.3. Also, the existence of Justin Bieber and Johnny Depp as celebrities in Earth-Bet in** _ **Worm**_ **is canon, per 2.6. Lisa's WTF moment, if you couldn't tell, was inspired by the scene in the** _ **Boondock Saints**_ **. You know the one.**

 **This was definitely the most difficult chapter for me to write yet—I find Lisa to be a hard character to write and finding the right "voice" for her can often be an exercise in frustration.**

 **She's a complex character and there are a lot of aspects of her I tried to capture here: her as a teenager, her as a former rich kid with traces of her upbringing left over, her as a current street kid wising up to Brockton Bay's underbelly, her with a somewhat abrasive personality aimed towards securing informational superiority over all others (has to be the smartest in the room), her as someone who has something of a vindictive side to her when pushed, her as having sympathy for would-be broken birds, her as a teenager trying to find some semblance of companionship (humans are social creatures after all), her own vulnerability in trying to portray a strong front and not allowing people to dissect her the way she does it freely to others, her as someone trying to escape any authorities that would seek to use her and make her own path, etc. I've tried to build in a lot of those motivations and forces into this dialogue, which I hoped was able to convey it.**

 **Ultimately, Lisa's a** _ **person**_ **and writing people is** _ **hard**_ **.**


	8. Forge 1-8

**Forge 1.8**

It was sometime before noon by the time I got off the bus a block away from the public library. Men and women wearing business casual bustled along the streets, talking on cell phones and probably heading out to catch their lunch break. Brockton Bay was a city of extremes, where you could pass a couple of blocks west of the Boardwalk right into gang territory, without much separating the two. Thankfully, Downtown was one of the nicer areas, with skyscrapers, wide streets, and a watchful police presence.

The Brockton Bay Central Library looked a lot more like a fancy art gallery than a public library. As I walked inside, I could see large paintings framing the corridors, with everything from portraits to abstract art, and the entire floor seemed to be supported by massive pillars spaced out every so often. I didn't have a card on me to reserve a computer downstairs and I didn't have a laptop to use the library's free wi-fi, so I headed upstairs to use the public computers.

Unfortunately, I had come at a pretty bad time—there was a long line leading up to the computers. It was half past eleven and people from the nearby offices and businesses had starting coming to do some quiet browsing during their lunch break. The next twenty minutes or so was pretty boring, since I couldn't leave to go skim through some books unless I wanted to lose my spot in line.

Finally, I was able to sit down at a computer off to the side. Lisa had helped sort things together into something resembling an actual plan, so I had an idea of what to look for first. I searched the web for "Alan Barnes" and came up with a bunch of hits, none of them what I wanted either. I tried "Alan Barnes Brockton Bay" and one result near the middle caught my eye. It… wasn't what I had been looking for, but I couldn't help but click the link.

 _BROCKTON BAY BULLETIN_

 _Gang attack in broad daylight leaves teenage victim and four others dead_

 _Adrianne Wu_

 _Published 08/30/09_

 _A brutal attack in the early morning hours of August 26_ _th_ _this year left one teenager and four suspected gang members dead. Emma Barnes, 14, and her father, Alan Barnes, were driving back home before being cornered on a road by the intersection of Briarhollow and Plymouth, south of the Boardwalk, by five suspected members of the Asian Bad Boyz (ABB). Police report that Emma Barnes was stabbed multiple times, though she apparently was able to fight back and kill four of her attackers before dying of blood loss. One of the confirmed deceased suspects is Lao Zheng, 26, formerly imprisoned for assault, armed robbery, and possession of a controlled substance, and was previously suspected of having ties to the ABB. Police have declined to release the names of the other four suspects due to their ages and investigation is underway to locate the missing suspect. Alan Barnes, a divorce attorney with Rosenthal, Smythe, & Vickers, could not be reached for any comments..._

Updates to the article went on to speculate that the attack was an ABB initiation gone wrong, another added a picture of me—with my nose still attached—and yet another a few days later included a more complete description of what had happened at… the alley. I closed the tab when the article started going into more detail about my injuries—I didn't need a play-by-play of what had happened. I knew well enough what they had done.

I slumped in my chair, staring at nothing for a minute, trying not to think depressing thoughts. I came here with some goals to accomplish and sitting around wasting time moping wasn't going to help me with them. If there was one useful thing I had gotten out of the article, it was the name of the law firm Dad used to work at, which I had never bothered to learn. The only thing I had known was that it was the same one Brandish worked at.

Going to the firm's website let me look up all of their current attorneys—I noticed "Carol Dallon" near the top—but there wasn't anything about Dad on there. If he had changed firms, they must have removed him from their directory.

Search results for "Alan Barnes Rosenthal Smythe & Vickers" were more on target. After skipping a couple of links that led to galleries of award ceremonies or PDFs of previous cases, I found an old page on the firm's website that hadn't been taken down that listed Dad's profile—where he graduated, his specialty, some of the cases he had done. It didn't say anything about where he was an attorney now though.

I tried "Alan Barnes divorce attorney Columbia University" next. The top result was the same page from earlier, which listed Dad's law school as Columbia, with the next couple of hits similarly useless. The fifth link from the top looked more promising though. It was a different law firm this time, Eckhart & Ingersoll. As far as I knew, Dad had been with the same law firm for years and years—this must be where he practiced now.

I clicked the link and navigated under "B" for the list of lawyers. "Alan Barnes" stood out as the first entry, along with an e-mail address, brief description of his background, education, and specialty in divorce law, as well as a phone number.

Exactly what I had been looking for. I scrolled down to see what city in the state he was and…

Philadelphia.

Fuck.

I took a deep breath. Truth be told, while riding the bus here, I had been psyching myself up for the possibility that my parents had moved out of state. This wasn't entirely unexpected and honestly this wasn't as bad as it could have been—they could have decided to move to the other side of the country over to California or something. Philly wasn't all that far from Brockton Bay anyway… if it came down to it, I could just take a Greyhound or something.

I jotted down the firm's address, as well as Dad's email address and office phone number, using one of the scraps of paper and pencils the library kept by the computers.

Next, I went to the homepage for Brockton Bay's local college. From there, I went to the student and staff directory to look up "Barnes, Anne."

The only result listed an "Anne Barnes" as a junior in their School of Natural Sciences, along with an email address. Anne was studying biology, wasn't she? If she was still listed there, then she had to be a student there even now.

I felt a surge of hope: she was probably still in Brockton Bay. Maybe she had moved to one of the dorms there. I wrote down the email address under Dad's number. I only wished I remembered what her cell phone number was, if she even had the same one still. I didn't have the change to print out a map of the campus, but I was able to roughly pick out where the dorms were located relative to the bordering street.

With this and Dad's info, I could contact my family, let them know that I was alright… for a certain definition of "alright." For a moment, I thought about logging into my old email and sending a couple of emails off to Anne and Dad.

I bit my lip—no, that was a stupid idea. Who would really believe someone sending an email or calling over the phone claiming that they were their previously departed daughter or sister? I'd have to be _smarter_ about it. I couldn't open up with the truth, as incredible as it already was. If I did end up contacting them that way, I'd have to find a more believable reason to want to get in touch.

I had gotten what I had come here for. I could just leave now and head to the college to find out where Anne was staying and then go back to Taylor's house and figure things out from there. I started getting up, then sat back down. I thought back to what Lisa had said, about how people were already talking about what happened with Cricket and the others. Could the news really already be out?

I went to the Brockton Bay Bulletin's homepage and spent a couple of minutes browsing through the newsfeed. There were a few articles about Mayor Christener's re-election chances in the coming year, some new developments by the Medhall Corporation, and an editorial on the fallout of the Behemoth attack earlier this year, but nothing that mentioned Cricket and the others.

If the official news outlets hadn't twigged onto what happened, then…

I frowned, before opening a new tab and heading to Parahumans Online. Parahumans Online—or "PHO" as it was better known—was pretty much _the_ website you went to for anything and everything cape-related. I had lurked there a few times before, but I had never bothered to make an account or really steep myself in the intricacies of cape culture the way some of my classmates had. The front page featured continuously updating cape news from around the world and included anything from the most recent sightings of the Slaughterhouse Nine to rumors about whether or not Alexandria and Eidolon were in a secret relationship together.

I'll admit I might have read through that last article more than I really should have.

The website also maintained a wiki anyone could edit if you wanted the scoop on specific capes, teams, or cape-related events, as well as a message board with an enormous number of sub-forums covering particular cities and capes. Given how active the boards were supposed to be, someone might have already posted something on the Brockton Bay board about what happened near the apartment complex.

I didn't have an account, but _Melody_ did. I hesitated for a second before I logged into the message boards, using my knowledge of Cricket's PHO user name and password. I wasn't sure if anyone tracked these public computers, but Melody preferred lurking more than posting. She had never outed herself as having Empire ties on the boards before.

I navigated over to the Brockton Bay sub-forum and looked through the topics. Most of the first few topics didn't seem to have any information—there was a thread speculating on whether Kaiser could conceivably take Lung, the results of some brawl close to Downtown between Armsmaster and some E88 capes, another debating what a Merchant-ruled Brockton Bay would be like, change the page and…

Hang on.

I clicked the third topic on the second page, trepidation growing within me.

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 **Topic: Cape fight outside my apartment just now!**  
 **In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Discussion (Public Board)**

 **Toolkit7** (Original Poster)  
Posted On Jun 7th 2010:  
Holy shit, something major went down right outside my apartment super early this morning. Gunshots woke me up just before things started to get crazy. Check out this vid.

 **(Showing page 1 of 1)**

► **LaughItUp**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Dude, the quality on that video really blows. Not sure what the big deal is: just another night in the Bay. The lightshow was kinda cool I guess.

► **Maledict**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
I don't think BB has an electricity using cape in the Protectorate, Wards, or any of the gangs, so... I'm thinking it's prolly a new cape.

► **Cyberize**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Whoa, that was hardcore. If you pay close attention to just before all the lights and shit, that new cape looks like he's cutting someone's head off. Fight after is pretty awesome too, if hard to make out.

► **Toolkit7** (Original Poster)  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Yo, not everyone can afford a super fancy phone and crap. Anyway, PRT and BBPD came down like a hammer here and blocked the street off. Not the first time a cape fight's happened around here tho.

Just another day with the ABB and the E88 in this town. Fucking skinheads I tell you. Anyway, I'mma head back to bed.

► **Lvl20Pally**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Looks like someone started off their cape career by going medieval on some nazis. I approve!

► **Lung4Lyfe**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Can't confirm anything super solid, but a friend of a friend told me this morning that they heard that an E88 cape got whacked by a new ABB cape :)

Maybe our mystery cape here?

► **DistressGirl** (Veteran Member)  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Cyberize, if you pay even closer attention after the fight, you'll see that the new cape looks like a girl, not a guy. Anyway I can't say I like the idea of another psychopathic cape joining the ABB if that's true. We already got enough of those with Oni Lee.

► **MastaOfDisasta**  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Why didn't she use all that lightning earlier? She was getting owned before she did that and then took down the rest of those thugs super quick. And Lung4Lyfe, which E88 cape died? Didn't even look like there was another cape down there.

► **Glockensqueal** (Wiki Warrior) (Veteran Member)  
Replied On Jun 7th 2010:  
Not all powers are straightforward. Maybe she didn't use that lightning attack earlier because she couldn't before. Anyway, I'd be interested to see if we get any more concrete information on this new cape + capabilities later. (And whether or not she is actually ABB)

 **End of Page. 1**

I turned down the volume on the computer all the way before I clicked the link. A grainy video popped up in a new tab, a phone video taken through an apartment window. After a second, it zoomed in on what looked like myself and Cricket. You could sort of see that I was wearing something white, but thankfully the quality was too poor to really see any other details. Cricket was a dark silhouette by contrast, only her gleaming face mask and kamas serving to make her out in the darkness. You couldn't really tell who either of us were and it was the flashes of our blades that really served to keep track of what was happening.

Cricket and I were fighting—the video started after she had already thrown me against the dumpster and the other skinheads around were still surrounding us. I watched in silence as the video progressed, the camera zooming in slightly when I had Cricket on her knees and executed her, though you couldn't see any of the blood. Then came the lightning storm and looking at it from the outside, I did have to admit that it was pretty impressive to see all the destruction, though not all of it could be seen from the limited view through the apartment window.

The video continued on with the fight I had immediately afterward, taking down the remaining thugs. My face wasn't turned towards the camera, but with the flames illuminating me you could tell that I was a red-headed girl and wearing something white and blood-stained. The video ended when I ran out of view of the window, when I had been going over to wash off under the hydrant and then loot the corpses.

I closed the tab and leaned back in my chair, eyes shut. Lisa was right—the news had gotten out, _fast_.

I didn't like the idea that I had been seen during that fight and now it was recorded for everyone to view, let alone that people were suspecting me of being an ABB cape of all things. That "Lung4Lyfe" must have been connected with one of those ABB thugs I had let go earlier. Fuck, maybe I _should_ have just killed them after all. It wasn't as though it would have taken me that much time. Why the hell hadn't I?

The only saving grace was that the video hadn't shown my face at all, or what I had changed into. Nose-less red-headed teens with my body type and what was I wearing weren't a dime a dozen in Brockton Bay. The red jacket I was wearing covered the worst of the damage to my dress, but I didn't know if the smell of dirt and blood had completely gone away. It wasn't as though I could tell—I'd need a sense of smell in the first place.

Oddly, the thread hadn't mentioned anything at all about my regenerating powers, the way Lisa had implied other people on the streets knew. Maybe Lisa had picked up on that aspect of my powers the same way she had also figured out I was a parahuman? It was probably just too early all around—there hadn't been that many replies to the thread and the PRT likely hadn't even released a statement just yet. I was still off the radar for the most part, but with an Empire cape dead, I knew that would change quickly enough.

Something tapped me on the shoulder. I blinked my eyes open, turning around to see a man dressed in a full-button shirt and slacks. He flinched a little when he saw my face, but managed to nod over to the computer.

"Pardon me, are you done with that?"

The screensaver was scrolling and I moved the mouse to clear it. "Sorry, give me a sec." I quickly logged out of PHO and cleared my history before shutting off the browser. "Here you go."

I got off the chair and stepped away, heading down to exit the library and take the next bus out.

* * *

Between waiting for the next northbound bus and then sitting through traffic, it was another twenty minutes by the time I stepped off the bus and onto the stop just next to the college. As close as the library was to both my house and the town college, I probably could have ran over, but I wasn't in any big hurry just yet.

I passed by quaint housing and stone buildings. I was more than familiar with this part of town south of the Boardwalk and it was easy to navigate my way towards the college. In terms of quality, the neighborhoods around the local college were somewhere between Downtown and the Docks.

The campus itself wasn't exactly massive. The buildings and grounds were tightly condensed around each other, giving the whole place a very compact appearance. Still, it was an accredited state university, with all the benefits and funding you could expect.

I ran alongside the main road leading into the campus—Anne and Mom and brought me here earlier before, so I had some idea of where to go. I double-checked the makeshift map I had sketched out earlier and made my way across the street over towards the residence halls. Anne had only stayed home because of how close we were to the college, but I knew that we could have easily afforded for her to be renting out a dorm instead.

Anticipation roiled in my gut as the residence halls loomed into view—if Anne was really here, what would she say? What should I do?

The dorms laid inside a set of plain white buildings, arranged across a side street. The main building was marked off by a sign, indicating where all new prospective residents could go to apply. Students flitted back and forth across the fields and past the streets. A girl on a skateboard zoomed past me, almost knocking me over, followed closely by someone else on a bicycle. A couple holding hands glanced my way, took a look at my face, and quickly averted their eyes.

I went up the steps, mumbling a "Thank you" when someone leaving the building held the door out for me. My back straightened when I felt a distant pulsating sensation at the base of my neck—another parahuman was within my range and as the intensity of the pressure increased, I could tell that they were getting steadily closer. I guess even capes went to college like ordinary people. I was tempted to follow it like I had tracked the same feeling to Lisa, but I was wary of the idea of coming across another potential cape—there was no guarantee they'd be as friendly (relatively) as Lisa had been.

I walked over to the front desk, where a bored twenty-something guy with glasses in a university T-shirt and jeans slouched behind a counter, staring at something on his computer. He was probably one of the RAs. I stood there for a couple of seconds. He didn't look up, continuing to blissfully browse.

"Excuse me?" I said after a few more seconds.

"Huh? Oh, oh, sorry," he said, hastily clearing something on his browser and straightening himself on his chair. He squinted at me and balked when he got a good look at my face. "Er, are you here to apply for residency? I'll need your university ID and—"

"No, no, I'm not a student," I said. "I'm just trying to see if someone's living here. Anne Barnes, B-A-R-N-E-S. Do you know what dorm she's staying at?"

He scratched his head. "Uh, technically, I'm not supposed to answer any questions of that kind."

I frowned. "Why not?"

The RA shrugged. "If a student staying here contacted you before to come escort you inside or if you knew their number to ask them to come out, that'd be fine. Other than that though, I can't just let anyone inside the residence hall."

"Can't you just tell me if she's even in any of the dorms?"

The RA shook his head. "Sorry, but school regs say not to volunteer that kind of info."

"Look, I know her family," I said. "Can't you just make a quick exception?"

He looked at me uneasily. "I'd get in big trouble if I started giving out private student information to anyone that just came by and claimed to 'know their family.'"

I brought a hand to my forehead. Was I really going to be given the run-around _this_ close to where Anne could be? "I just want to know where Anne Barnes is. I don't think I'm asking for much here."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to give you that kind of information. These policies exist to ensure student safety."

"You can't even give me a _phone number_?"

His eyebrows scrunched up with annoyance. "I think I've made clear that I'm not allowed to give you anything." He looked me up and down, taking in my appearance. "We take student privacy seriously here. We've got enough bad things going on in Brockton Bay as it is—we don't want to risk letting some crazy or a rapist or anyone else that might risk the safety of the students coming here."

Did he seriously just imply…

"Do I _look_ like some would-be rapist, you idiot?" I snapped, startling him. "I just want to know where Anne Barnes is. What the hell is so difficult to understand about that?"

"Whoa, whoa," he said, waving his hands. "Let's not get—"

I slapped my hand against the desk, making him jump up slightly. "Thirty seconds," I said loudly. "I'm just asking for thirty seconds to see Anne Barnes. You can walk me in and out if you're that paranoid about it."

"Again, I can't—"

"At least fucking tell me if she's even here so I'm not wasting my time!" I said over him, my patience almost completely evaporated by now. "Anne Barnes—I just want to know where Anne Barnes is, if she's even here at all to begin with. I'm a friend of the family, like I already said."

"I think I'm going to have to ask you to leave now," the RA said, unmoved by my requests as he began to pick up a telephone.

I brought a palm to my forehead, the vibrating pressure in my neck growing stronger and stronger. I ignored it.

"For fuck's sake…" I whispered, turning around and walking away from the desk, heading towards the door. I was half-tempted to start shouting Anne's name, see if anyone here knew her. I'd probably only succeed in embarrassing myself if I did that.

"You know Anne?"

I half-turned, seeing someone in the periphery of my vision. She was shorter than me, a petite five feet tops maybe—dark-skinned with Middle Eastern features, full lips, and surprisingly large eyes.

And with just a couple of feet separating us, the buzzing along my neck pressed up full force against the base of my skull. I stopped in my tracks—this must have been the parahuman I was sensing before.

"Sorry," she said, her voice edged with a hint of an accent. "I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying to the RA."

She couldn't be Empire, for obvious reasons. She probably wasn't ABB either—I think they only tended to take East Asians—and I strongly doubted that a Merchant cape would be attending university. Protectorate then?

"You were asking about Anne? Anne Barnes? Biology student?" she said, interrupting my attempt at figuring out which cape she was.

"Yeah, I was wanting to know where Anne was," I replied. "I'm a friend of her family and I needed to get in touch with her. I just wasn't sure where to go looking to see her in person."

She peered at me curiously. "Aren't you a little young to be Anne's friend? I don't know Anne that well, but I've never seen you around here before."

"We aren't exactly friends," I replied. "I'm just close to the family. I knew her… sister."

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, as if searching for any sign of deception, that I might pose some sort of threat. "Alright, I suppose it can't hurt. I'm not close to Anne," she said, "but she lives down the same hallway I do. I've talked to her a few times."

"So she's here then?" I said, excitement rising inside me. "Could you please send her a message for me? Just tell her—"

"She's not here anymore," she interrupted. "She left for summer break earlier. You won't find her back here until the fall semester begins most likely."

My face fell. It figured that it wouldn't be this easy. "Do you know where she went?"

The student shrugged. "Visiting her parents, I think she said."

Which meant that Anne was somewhere in Philadelphia with Mom and Dad. Not even in the same state anymore.

I sighed. "Thanks for letting me know."

She nodded and I exited through the open door, going down the steps and back towards the street that would let me leave the campus.

There was still one place left in this city I needed to go to.

* * *

I weaved past pedestrians, trying to maintain a steady pace. I already had made my way from the college over towards my house. From there, I was going along the street heading towards Taylor's house, taking the same path from before.

I thought about what that Middle-Eastern cape had said, about where Anne had gone. It looked like Mom, Dad, and Anne had all left to Philadelphia, gone out of the state. I had been hoping to run into at least Anne in Brockton Bay, but I guess even that had been too much to hope for. If only I had woken up sooner, I might have actually caught Anne before the summer began.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been I guess. My family might be out of the city and out of the state even, but at the very least, they were still in New England. It wasn't as though they were completely out of reach—thank God they hadn't decided to move to the West Coast or something. Things had changed dramatically, but not so much that it was impossible for me to still get in touch with them.

I took the turn into Taylor's neighborhood, already having shot past the nearby bus stop. The sun loomed close overhead, filtered through the leaves of the trees that hung above. Taylor had to be back by now, given how long it had been since I was last here. I stopped in front of her house, looking up the steps. It still looked the same as before as when I had seen it earlier today. The neighbors across the street from before looked like they had gone outside though, their driveway empty.

I bounded up the steps, feeling a heady anticipation inside me. Even if every other lead had proved a disappointment so far, I knew I could depend on Taylor to deliver. If there was one person I could trust to still be in Brockton Bay, it would be Taylor.

I rang the doorbell twice and waited. No one answered and I couldn't hear anyone inside. I rang a couple of more times, just to be sure.

No response.

I grimaced—I must have come too early. Taylor was probably just coming back from eating out with her… friends, or something. It was midday and lunch time hadn't ended yet. I sat down on the front steps as before. I leaned back against the railing of the stairs, closing my eyes and listening to the summer breeze.

My mind drifted.

I wondered what my family was doing now, what kind of house they were in. Knowing Mom, she'd probably be trying to get everything just right—the garden, what kind of draperies to put up, and more. Anne was a year or two away from finishing college, readying to apply to medical school like she had planned to since high school. Dad would be working at a new firm, with new co-workers and a different pool of clients.

And Anne…

Anne and I had never been all that close as sisters. We never really fought or anything like that and she looked out for me when she could. Still, given how much older she was than me, by the time I was making it through the end of grade school, she was already well into high school. Her friends and mine didn't hang out and our interests had never quite aligned.

We lived in the same house, left for school at the same time, and our rooms were right across from each other, and yet too often I felt like we were living different lives. We spent so much time next to each other, but not _with_ each other. I was closer to Taylor than I had ever been with Anne, and I knew there was something deeply wrong about that fact, that I could grow distant from my own sister. I don't think there was any one person or event I could blame for things becoming that way, but it was the way it was.

If I saw her again, I was going to make damn sure to try to change things. But that was in the event that I did get to see her again, which would mean I'd have to head out of the state entirely.

Silent minutes passed by. It must have been at least a half hour by now and I was starting to become impatient. I didn't see Taylor earlier this morning and she _still_ wasn't back home, even after midday? I got up and rang the doorbell a couple of times out of frustration. Pointless—it's not as if Taylor would magically appear out of nowhere if she hadn't been inside before.

Where the heck was she? I hadn't seen her at the Boardwalk or at the Library, but that itself didn't necessarily mean anything—you could easily miss one person out of the hundreds to thousands that regularly went there daily. Could she be at the mall or something still?

Or…

Or maybe she wasn't back home because she wasn't even in this neighborhood anymore.

I didn't want to consider that option, but now that the thought was in my head, it refused to leave. I hadn't let myself think it before—I had refused to consider the possibility that even _Taylor_ wouldn't be here for me to see.

This time last year, Taylor had left Brockton Bay that summer for nature camp. It made sense, even if I didn't want it to—just before… before the attack, Taylor had been on the phone talking about it. And it was just the time of year for her to be there and she'd be gone for weeks yet before she would come back.

That wasn't the only possible explanation—Taylor's family had been having money problems, hadn't they? I had thought earlier that meant they couldn't afford to move to a new home, but it could just as easily mean that they couldn't afford to stay that at the one they had been at to begin with. For all I knew, they could be living in an apartment anywhere in the city.

Maybe even out of the city. Not even Mr. Hebert would be around.

Then there wasn't any point in me still being here.

I stepped away from Taylor's house and walked down the sidewalk, one haphazard step after the other, a gloomy haze infiltrating my mind.

It had only been several hours by now, from my own perspective, before I had to deal with any of this. Like I had told Lisa, I had just been a normal girl. I had been on the phone with my best friend, heading back home, waiting for her to return from nature camp but now…

Now, I had gone through more pain than I could scarcely imagined. I had learned what it really meant to be _afraid_ —to have the kind of fear that left you either paralyzed or… turned you into something ugly. I had seen the kinds of things people were all too willing to do to each other, what _I_ was capable of doing just as easily.

I had been slashed and stabbed, broken my back, disemboweled, and had even been shot in the head. I had gouged out another person's eyes, I had bitten off fingers and nearly my own tongue, and I had killed people without so much as a moment's hesitation. I had powers, but the kind of powers fit for a beast, not a human being.

How had Emma Barnes ever come to this?

The shift, the change in perspective… it wasn't something I had a grip on, something I could relate to _before_. The world had taken on a new clarity, but one that revealed the ugliness I had never paid attention to earlier.

I cast all my hopes on the prospect of seeing _someone_ —Mom, Dad, Anne, Taylor—to latch onto, to give me some kind of anchor. And it looked like that hope that dried up completely. There wasn't anyone left here to help me, someone that could help me understand what was happening to me, make sense of what I was turning into.

Ever since this nightmare began I had been going from place to place with only the vague hope of seeing my family or friends again. I just wanted to have a chance to sit down and not have to constantly worry, to continually cast my mind back to the… attack. Or after.

I wanted to grasp onto some sense of normalcy, to reach out to the people that mattered to me so I could still feel like I was Emma Barnes. But with everyone place I looked, even after I had torn myself away from moving from kill to kill, I had found no solutions. I had gone back to my house to find that my parents had moved out months before and out of the state entirely, I went to my sister's college to learn that I had just missed her, and not even my best friend was here anymore.

I had no one but myself to look to.

Somehow, walking aimlessly like I had been, I found myself at the park that was near Taylor's house. There weren't that many people here right now, just a couple of parents with their kids and a few more people in the distance that were jogging around the boundary. There was a play structure further back, with a wooden bridge connecting one side to the other.

I remembered that bridge.

I strode over, walking past a mother who was pushing a toddler on a swing. I walked towards the structure, going up the steps and past the slide, eyes downcast.

I sat down on one end of the bridge, let my feet dangle in midair. The wood was cold and damp, just like it almost always was. I stared at the ground, not moving, not speaking—just breathing in and out and looking down at my hands.

Something cool and wet dripped down my face and splashed against my palms. Then another, and another, until tears were streaming down my face. I rested my arms against the railing and buried my face into them, muffling my sobs. My shoulders shook as I cried and cried.

Finally, I raised my face, taking a gasping, hiccupping breath as I tried to master myself. I rubbed my eyes, my damned power already taking care of the soreness.

"I come here to think sometimes too."

I wiped at my eyes again, looking over at my side. There was someone else on the bridge, sitting down on the other end. Long hair concealed her face, with the rest of her obscured by shadows cast over by nearby trees.

I coughed. "Yeah?" I said, managing to keep the worst of it out of my voice.

"It's peaceful here," she said, arms folded over the railing, looking out at something in the distance. She spoke quietly—so much so that I had to strain myself to hear her. "Good spot for sitting, thinking, talking, or…" She sighed. "Having a good cry, I suppose."

I flushed. I guess I hadn't kept as quiet as I had wanted to be. I looked back down at the ground. "Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it. You're not the first person to come here to do that," she replied. "Won't be the last either."

"You come here often also?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she said. "There are a few good memories here. Problem is that all the good ones are tied up with the bad. You try to think about the good, but you just get reminded of all the bad soon enough. It makes it hard to separate the two."

I thought about that. It would explain why my parents moved. If every time you had to walk past my room, remember all the times I had stayed up with Taylor or gotten my hair done by my Mom, and then have to think about what had happened to me… I could see how could take its toll on you.

Better just to move on, go to a different city, not having to be in same place as your dead daughter. Dad had told me he planned on staying in the same house until he died, but that apparently changed when _I_ died.

"Why even come here at all then?" I said.

"I'd rather remember the good, even with the bad, than not at all," she replied. "I think it'd be even worse to ignore it entirely."

"Maybe. I used to come here with a friend myself," I said. "The two of us would just sit here and talk about whatever."

"You don't anymore?"

I leaned back on my hands, staring at the clouds. "I don't even know where she is. Too many… too many things changed and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to even do."

"I know what that feeling's like," the girl said. "The world's moving on and you're left struggling to adapt. People and places aren't what they used to be like, aren't even there anymore."

"The scary thing is that _I'm_ changing too," I said. "I don't know what to think about it, what I'll be like eventually."

"We know what we are, but not what we may be," she replied, her voice lilting upwards.

"Is that from a book or something?" I asked.

"Shakespeare," she said softly. " _Hamlet_."

"Well, I'm not even sure if I know what I _am_ right now to begin with."

"That would be a problem," she admitted. "Have you tried talking to someone about it?"

I glanced over at her, her form still caught in the shadows. "Are you volunteering?"

"Why not?" she said, sighing.

We didn't say anything for a few moments. I watched one of the kids down below chasing another one, playing tag or something.

"How did you adapt to it? Handle the changes, make things work? Fix things?" I said finally.

"I think," she said carefully, "that I'm the wrong person to be asking about that."

"Oh," I said quietly. "You sounded like you were really resilient. Like you had it totally together."

She didn't say anything for a few moments before she threw back her head and laughed. She broke off into chuckles, raising a hand to her mouth. "Sorry… sorry…" she said and I could hear the smile in her voice. "For a second there, you sounded _exactly_ like someone I used to know."

She got up, brushing splinters off of her jeans and after a moment's hesitation, I stood up as well, turning to face her. She stepped past the shadows, into the light, and I froze as she came into view.

She brushed away hair from her face. "Sorry, we've been talking and I didn't even tell you my name. I'm—"

"Taylor!" I blurted out.

She was taller than I remembered, the glasses were different, but for all that, she was still the same as ever: the same wide mouth, the large eyes, the curly dark hair, the gangly figure. She had been so quiet that I hadn't even recognized her voice. A surge of emotions welled up inside me, so mixed up that I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry or both.

"How did you…" she trailed off, blinking when she took in my face, nose-less as it was. "You look… like…" She stopped talking, staring at me in growing shock.

I moved towards her and she flinched slightly. "Taylor, it's me! Emma!"

Her face flashed through a swirl of emotions, too quick for me to keep track of. Finally, she tensed, her eyes going hard. "Did someone put you up to this? You'd pull something as sick as this, especially _here_?"

"Taylor, it _is_ me," I said, moving a step forward.

"Stay the fuck back," she snapped, a hand trailing towards the back pocket of her jeans as she took a half-step backwards. "What kind of person pretends to be a dead girl?"

I swallowed. I needed to prove to her who I was, tell her something only she and I could know. "Taylor, do you remember? When we were here, a year… no, two years ago by now. We were on this bridge, just a month after your mom died."

Her lips thinned to a straight line, but she didn't move away any further.

I looked down and to the side, towards the middle of the bridge, and pointed. "We sat right there, drinking coffee, remember? I told you that I admired you for being so resilient, that after your mom died you had gone to pieces but you were so together now after barely a month. That I couldn't have done the same."

Taylor's face paled with each word I spoke, her lips trembling, her shoulders shaking.

I felt tears coming to my eyes again as I continued. "And you told me… you told me that you weren't. You could hold it together during the day, but you cried yourself to sleep for a straight week. You… you cried on my shoulder after you told me that."

"Em-Emma?" she said hoarsely, her hands falling limp and to her sides, eyes wide with disbelief.

"I think…" I said, my voice beginning to break as a lump grew in my throat. "I think I could use a shoulder now too."

She didn't resist me as I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around hers, letting me rest my head against the bottom of her shoulder as I wept.

Eventually, she joined me.

* * *

 **And now we come to the closing portion of the first arc with just an interlude to go to top it off. The description of Brockton Bay's Downtown and Central Library is drawn from 2.5 of** _ **Worm**_ **. The description of Parahumans Online (with some liberties) is drawn from 2.2. The brief description of the college area is from 15.2. The short PHO segment used here was generated using** _ **Myrddin**_ **, which is an online PHO interlude generator for** _ **Worm**_ **fanfics.**


	9. Forge 1-x

**Interlude 1**

The darkness was filled with the fading echoes of supersonic cracks as guns fired in an irregular, staccato beat. As dark as it was now, all that could be seen of where the shots came from were the muzzle flashes, some thirty feet off on the other side of the street. The harsh smell of gunsmoke polluted the air, so thick that it made him want to cough.

A nearby car window shattered, sprinkling glass as the bullets continued on to gouge small holes in the brick wall behind, sending up a puff of dust. One of the newer recruits got up to return fire, but then he immediately collapsed to the ground, dropping his pistol as the sound of the shot came a moment later.

"Motherfucker!" he screamed in pain, clutching his bleeding ear, torn clean off from the bullet's impact. He was lucky he hadn't taken it through his head.

"Stick to cover!" Hookwolf shouted over the cacophony of gunfire.

One of his more experienced lieutenants laid down and stuck out his rifle out from underneath the car he had been hiding behind. From this close, the gunshots were incredibly loud, nearly deafening as he methodically fired two double-taps in quick succession. There were a pair of distant cries following the shots and the gunfire they now received became more cautious, less frequent.

Hookwolf strode out, heedless of the danger. The gunfire shifted and moved in his direction, filling his vision with flashes of light. The shots struck his chest but failed to penetrate deeply, turned aside by the shifting, interlocking blades just beneath the surface of his skin. Bullets zipped out from behind him, his men providing cover fire as he advanced.

He drew his head towards the 'core' that laid at the heart of his power, replacing it with a whirling medley of blades. He left his eyes where they were, blinded by the moving blades until they were shifting faster than he could keep track of, moving faster than an eyeblink. He began to run as fast he could, the muscles along his arm shifting and rippling as metal took their place. Hooks and blades unfurled, transforming his arm into a revolving mass that merged into the shape of an overly large fishhook. He could have switched to his full, quadruped form, but there was no need for that yet.

The gunfire across the street grew more intense as he raced towards it and he bounded over the side of a car, sliding off the hood and landing right in the middle of the attackers.

" _Kuso!_ Hookwolf!"

He didn't get much of a chance to survey his surroundings before every gun was turned in his direction. Even with his hearing protection, the sheer volume of the light and noise he was suddenly assaulted with almost staggered him.

Almost.

The nearest chink was backing away, shooting wildly at him with a machine pistol. He barely got a fifth shot off before Hookwolf lashed out with his bladed arm, ripping through flesh and bone in an instant. Dark viscera and blood sprayed as the thug collapsed, literally ripped into two. His finger was still depressed on the trigger as his top half fell, his arm flopping and accidentally catching his partner beside him with a line of bullets that started on wall above him and descended down to his head. The thug's eyes burst open like a grape in a bloody explosion and he collapsed, his face a broken ruin.

His night vision was shot with all the light he had been exposed to but he could still hear the other thugs cursing, trying to back away from him and get the hell out of his way. He whirled around, slashing out with his arm. It plunged into a brick wall in its path and tore through it with a screeching noise that left crumbling fragments to fall in its wake. He got one of the slower chinks as they ran, cutting him off at the knee.

The thug screamed as he fell awkwardly and onto his side, his rifle slipping from his grasp, blood spurting out from the stump where the rest of his leg used to be attached. Hookwolf stepped over the wet remains of the first thug and finished off the still screaming chink with a quick, downward slash of his arm, abruptly cutting off his cries. The other gooks had retreated over to another pair of cars. One of their number was twitching on the ground, bleeding all over his body—shot at by his men who were still covering him with gunfire.

Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted off of his metal head and his limbs. Hookwolf dug his hooked arm deep into a part of the wall ahead and above him. Then he pulled, rapidly retracting the metal back at the same time, launching himself forward. He landed in a crouch just a few feet away from the remaining thugs, who were still trying to put distance between him and them. They had no time to react before he was already moving amongst them, both arms transformed as he began to kill. One of them died almost instantly, his head torn off his shoulders, blood geysering upward from the stump as he fell.

He watched the blood spurt and heard their screams, felt the rush of blood in his veins, and the scraping on steel on steel as his power worked. This was why he rarely used guns. Even as effective as they were, there was something more satisfying, something more _intimate_ about killing his enemies face-to-face like this—to test his raw power against his enemies, to see the lights die in their eyes, to watch how their faces contorted and shifted before they passed. It was in these moments, where he was plunged head-first into the chaos of battle, when he truly felt _alive_.

 _This is my calling_.

He was a swirling cyclone of steel death, splattered with the blood of his foes as he ripped through flesh, tore out muscle, and smashed through bone. This close to him, all you could do was just bleed and pray to die quickly. One of the thugs held down the trigger of his rifle and fired in full-auto bursts, desperately trying to riddle him with bullets. Oppressive light and noise bore down on him but Hookwolf simply crossed his transformed arms, bullets bouncing off, bracing one hook against the thug's hip and the other beneath his arm on the opposite side. Then he _pulled_ his arms apart.

There was a wet tearing noise like a damp rag being ripped apart as the chink exploded in a mess of gore, blood fountaining out beneath him. Hookwolf tossed the lower half of the corpse over the car, blood pouring in an arc as it flew. The other half he smashed against another thug, sending him stumbling over to crash against the wall as his other arm traced a low arc on the return swing, tearing into the thug's lower legs and sinking into brick beside it. The thug fell with a scream, his gun clicking uselessly—he had run out of ammunition.

Two others ahead tried to escape, moving past the car but they were intercepted by a hail of bullets. One of them took three rounds to the head—rifle-caliber, judging from how his skull blew apart, leaving him to flop down in a gory mess of bloodied brain and shattered bone. The other was shot through the center, his chest caving in as he was sent spiraling bloodily to the ground. The rest of them had managed to run away fast enough, barely avoiding gunfire and shouting as they disappeared into a nearby alley.

The last gook left was backing away from him on his arms, all of his friends around him dead or dying. Blood trailed from the stumps of the knees of the final thug as he futilely scrabbled backwards, rapidly saying something Hookwolf wasn't listening to. Hookwolf simply strode forward, freeing his arm from the wall, crimson liquid trailing down his steel arms and dripping wetly against the ground. He plunged his scythe-like arm into the chink and ripped him open without preamble from crotch to chin. The thug burst apart, spraying blood and revealing lacerated organs underneath that weakly pulsated as he let loose a piercing shriek of pain. He blubbered and coughed as blood flowed from his torn body, spilling down the sidewalk and onto the street below.

Hookwolf watched the thug die, watched his eyes grow dim as his cries faded to a choking death rattle. Hookwolf inhaled deeply as he looked around, as he took in his victory—the fading gurgles of those still dying, the splattered gore along the walls and ground, the metallic scent of blood on his arms, the acrid smell of gunsmoke in the air, and less pleasantly, the voided bowels of the deceased.

Others would have been repulsed to stand so close amidst the ugly aftermath of battle like this. But him? Here, he was in his most familiar element.

 _I was born in the wrong era_ , he mused.

If only he had been brought up during Rome's peak or while the Crusades were still happening, in a world where martial prowess was revered and where strength like his would be feared and respected, he would have been one of the greats. He would have marched to war, taken up sword and axe to his enemies, laid low his foes, chosen his pick of spoils, and then would have shared the company of his fellow warriors after. In another time, in another life, he could have been an Achilles or a Beowulf of the age, to be immortalized in song and drink for centuries to come.

But who would remember or celebrate him defeating a few nameless gooks like these ones, like the ones he ran across every week or so? He had hoped that graduating from the ring to the streets would give him what he had wanted, but in this day and age, people like him didn't thrive.

Hookwolf felt the elation leave him, let the metal recede back towards his core. The shifting blades and hooks dissolved and were replaced with flesh once more. He flexed his arms, now normal again except for the metal he had let rest underneath. He heard shuffling behind him and he turned to see his men jogging across the street towards him, guns held low and at the ready, keeping alert for any other threats.

One of the younger recruits, the one whose ear had been shot off earlier, took one look at what was left of the chinks and he braced himself against a car, doubling over as he hurled messily all over the pavement.

Hookwolf frowned, but said nothing. He was trying to cultivate the necessary killer instinct in the men and women he recruited, to have the drive and will it took to win, especially against the capes in this city. It was for this reason that he drove his people as hard as he did, to forge them into something greater. If they were to be true Aryan warriors, then he could demand nothing less.

Still, he understood that everyone had to start somewhere. So he could forgive this recruit who didn't have the stomach yet for this business.

"Erickson," Hookwolf said, looking to his most experienced man. "Anyone injured?"

Erickson, a broad-shouldered, tall man carrying an impressive looking rifle, jerked a thumb over in the vomiting recruit's direction. "The FNG lost an ear, but we're good." He spat on the ground next to the torn lower half of the corpse Hookwolf had tossed earlier onto the street. "Rest of the boys kept their calm and did their job, listened to my orders. Fucking gooks didn't stand a chance."

Hookwolf smiled underneath his mask. He knew he had chosen wisely in making Erickson one of his top lieutenants. Experienced help was hard to find and Erickson had exactly the sort of mindset Hookwolf valued. He held out a hand and Erickson handed him a cell phone. Hookwolf quickly tapped out a number and held the phone to his ear as his men began replacing their nearly empty magazines with fresh ones.

" _Feldflasche zwei_ ," came the reply once the call picked up.

" _Sieben kartenstelle_. Stormtiger, how's your area?"

There was a grunt over the line. " _Tangled with Oni Lee and some gooks earlier. We lost a few men but Cricket and her group showed up to help out. We're good._ "

"We're cleaning up here. Tell Cricket to scout the apartments within the hour once you're done there."

" _Got it_."

Hookwolf ended the call and handed the phone back to Erickson before jerking a head over towards another street.

This night wasn't over just yet.

* * *

The rest of their patrol wasn't as action-packed. He had met Stormtiger where their routes converged and they had ran into Oni Lee soon after, but beyond a short, almost perfunctory fight, the demon-faced cape had elected to retreat, not wanting to deal with both of them at once.

They had stuck mostly to what was technically the very upper edge of their own territory and going any further into the Docks would have had the chinks crawling out from everywhere, perhaps even drawing Lung to the field. Barring the leader of the ABB himself, he wasn't worried that they could actually hurt him, but his men were a different matter. Hookwolf didn't intend to waste recruits he had spent weeks training. Tonight was just a scouting detail, to test the borders of the ABB's territory.

Taking back what had been theirs would come later.

It was sometime past dawn now, dim rays of light illuminating the alley he was by. He had just finished talking to Krieg, who had gotten into a massive and highly noticeable fight with Armsmaster and Miss Militia in Downtown, with Fenja and Menja assisting. They had gotten away clean, but Krieg had badly cracked his ribs and would need to see Othala later.

Stormtiger arrived after five minutes, his own soldiers following close behind him.

" _Blitzkrieg sechs L_ ," Hookwolf said.

" _Ein grabenkreig A_ ," Stormtiger replied, looking over to the side. Erickson and the others kept guns trained on a couple of injured ABB thugs that they had captured, the remains of their dead allies already tossed into a nearby dumpster. A discarded pair of chains lay on the ground opposite them, along with a few knives.

"You want me to 'interrogate' them?"

Hookwolf chuckled. "Let's wait for Cricket first."

Stormtiger shifted in place. He couldn't see Stormtiger's face beneath his blue-white tiger mask, but he could tell that he was uncomfortable.

"What's wrong?"

"She hasn't been answering her phone," Stormtiger said. "And the most recent calls I tried have all been going right to her voicemail."

Hookwolf frowned beneath his mask and he withdrew his cell phone, dialing Cricket's number. Just like Stormtiger said, the call went immediately to her voicemail. He started tapping out a text message when Stormtiger interrupted him.

"I tried messaging her too. Hasn't replied to any of them."

"You think something happened to her?" Hookwolf said carefully, returning the phone to his pocket.

Stormtiger didn't say anything for a moment. "She was supposed to scout out that apartment complex tonight. Last message I got from her was that she was set to check it out with her men. She hasn't answered a call or text since then."

"Maybe her phone's off," Hookwolf replied.

"I thought it might be that, but I tried contacting a few of her soldiers she was taking with her tonight, the ones she gave me numbers for. No replies there either."

Hookwolf frowned beneath his mask. "Did you try calling Jürgen?"

Stormtiger nodded. "She sent him and a few men out to a different spot, but he's not far from those apartments. He said he'd scope it out, keep a low profile. I got off the phone with him ten minutes ago."

Hookwolf leaned back against the wall. Jürgen was Cricket's top lieutenant and a good, competent man all around. If anyone could figure out what had happened, it would be him. "When was the last time you had contact with her?"

"Just under forty minutes ago."

"Forty minutes…that was around when we were dealing with Oni Lee," Hookwolf said, rubbing his chin. "We were blocks away from those apartments. And no one's seen Lung all night. The ABB doesn't have anyone else that could take Cricket."

There was the sound of stifled laughter, and Hookwolf turned to see one of the thugs hoarsely chuckling. His laughter abruptly cut off when Hookwolf stepped towards him, the flesh of his hands melting away into a jumble of blades and hooks before coalescing into a claw with fingers as long as his forearms.

"You say something, chink?" Hookwolf said, crouching down to meet his eyes. "You know something about what happened to Cricket?"

"N-no," the thug said, staring wide-eyed at his transformed hand. Sweat dripped from a bloodied brow.

Hookwolf brought the claw, shifting and writhing with serrated edges, closer to the thug's throat. He gave a strangled scream as he tried to back away, pushing himself up against the wall of the alley as best as he could. His friend flinched and looked away.

"I think you're lying, chinaman," he said softly. "It's what your kind does: lie. I think you _do_ know something about what happened." He let his hand proceed an extra inch or so forward and the thug was practically trying to melt through the wall just to evade the blades along his hand.

"I can grow the metal even when it's embedded in something else. That opens up a lot of _possibilities_. Care to see any of them?"

"I– I–" the thug stuttered.

Hookwolf glanced over at the other gook, the one with the dragon tattoo on his forearm. "Don't think I've forgotten about you. Stormtiger."

Stormtiger strode forward, stooping down before the other gook. He roughly pushed him up against the wall, his other hand raised, a translucent haze around it slowly forming into the shape of a claw. The chink paled, saying nothing.

Hookwolf laughed lightly at the sight. "See that claw of his? Compressed air. The more time that passes, the more air he puts in there, makes it denser and tougher. Try to imagine what happens if he turns it into a wind blast after he stabs you with it."

At that, the thugs began blabbering all at once, talking over each other as they were now apparently eager to spill all the information they could. Hookwolf couldn't understand a thing they were saying.

"Shut the fuck up," Hookwolf growled and to their credit, they managed to stop speaking almost immediately.

"Let's play a quick game," Hookwolf said. "First one who can tell me what happened to Cricket wins. I won't kill them. The loser, well…" He chuckled. "I imagine you can figure out what _losing_ involves here."

"Cricket's dead!" shouted the thug in Stormtiger's grasp. "There's a new cape, she—"

"Fuck you!" snarled the chink Hookwolf was holding onto. "You fucking son of a—"

Hookwolf pressed his untransformed hand hard against the thug's throat, turning the shouting into choking gasps, bringing his bladed hand even closer now. He eyed the other chink.

"Keep going."

The thug swallowed, eyes darting back and forth between him and Stormtiger. "We – we got a new cape, I think. Never seen her before tonight. We came across her not far from those apartments I think you were talking about. We talked to her some, she said she killed Cricket. I didn't see her to do it, but she told us she killed Cricket."

Hookwolf's grip around the other thug tightened and he began to choke more frantically. Melody was _dead_? By some new ABB cape no less? He took a deep breath and removed his hand from the thug's throat, leaving him gasping painfully for air. He didn't need to crush his windpipe out of frustration.

The time for blood would come soon enough.

"How did you know she wasn't lying?" he said flatly.

"She…" the chink hesitated, before saying, "She had Cricket's weapons on her. Those scythes. The kamas."

Hookwolf exchanged a glance with Stormtiger. As far as he knew, no one else in the Bay used kamas like Cricket did. The only way she'd be without those was either when she hung them up herself—or if she was downed.

"This new cape," Stormtiger said in a low tone. "What's her name? What does she do? What does she look like? _Be detailed_."

"She's a regenerator," the chink said eagerly. "She was shot through the hand but she healed up like it was nothing. She was wearing a long red coat and covered her face with one of our scarves—the green-and-red ones. She had red hair, maybe five feet four tops, and she sounded like – she sounded like she was young. Just a teenager. I – I didn't catch her name."

Hookwolf said nothing for several long seconds. Then he turned to Stormtiger. "Call Jürgen."

Stormtiger rose, taking out a cellphone before he dialed a number. Hookwolf heard the ringtone after a few seconds before the call picked up.

" _Stormtiger!"_ said a gravelly voice over the speakerphone.

"Æsir twel—"

" _Vanir five!_ " interrupted Jürgen. " _Listen—PRT's all over the apartment complex. I wasn't able to get the best angle to see everything, but the place is a mess. Cars burning, the water hydrant's going, it looks like someone set off a fucking bomb inside there or something. Some serious shit just went down there._ "

"Cricket," Hookwolf said tensely. "Did you see Cricket?"

" _She's…_ " Jürgen's voice sagged over the call. " _Uniforms were carrying bodies out. One of them… one of them looked like Cricket's. Her head was cut off, Hookwolf. I'm – I'm sorry._ "

Hookwolf closed his eyes, gritting his teeth, clenching his fist. His power howled out to him, pulsating with fury, inviting him to invoke the wolf. Hookwolf eyes shot open and he roared with bestial rage. With a swipe of his bladed hand, he tore into the chink before him with so much force that it pierced all the way through his chest and into the wall behind.

The thug screamed in agony and fear, his cries quickly turning into choking gurgles as Hookwolf focused his power around his hands, willing the metal to expand and branch out in every direction. The other thug was screaming as well, but Hookwolf ignored him. He could feel steel shafts growing inside the thug, running down his stomach towards his legs, up his chest towards the head, ripping apart intervening muscles and organs with scarcely a moment's effort. Soon, a medley of needlepoints and hooks jutted out from all over the gook's skin, blood freely flowing onto the ground, filling the air with its coppery smell.

He had turned the thug into a human pincushion—from the inside out.

He breathed harshly under his mask for a few moments before he composed himself. The metal retracted, pulling back towards his hand, letting even more blood to splash against the pavement. Hookwolf rose, his hand normal once again as the corpse slumped to the ground.

The other thug was whimpering feebly, but said nothing. Hookwolf glanced over at him, and looked back up at Stormtiger. Then he nodded.

Stormtiger approached the remaining gook, claws of compressed air forming around his hands again.

"Wait!" the thug shouted, staring at Stormtiger. "I – I won, didn't I? I won the game! You said you weren't going to kill me!"

"I'm not," Hookwolf said distantly, still thinking about what Jürgen had said. " _He_ is."

Stormtiger's claws descended as the thug screamed and screamed.

* * *

"Ready," Stormtiger whispered, drawing more air towards his claws. Hookwolf said nothing and wasn't able to anyway—he was in his fully transformed state now, a shifting mass of hooks, blades and needlepoints, cast in the shape of a wolf. Across the street, also concealed from view, were the others, ready to follow-up on the initial assault. Cables of corded steel blades dug into the pavement several yards before him, even as he kept himself crouched on powerful canine legs.

After a minute passed, he saw the van rumble down the edge of the street. Stormtiger tensed and Hookwolf erected five needlepoints off of his back. The timing would have to be just right. He lowered them one at a time, judging the angle and the distance until…

 _Now_.

Hookwolf uncoiled his legs as he rapidly pulled himself forward by retracting the metal tendrils, as if he was launching himself off a slingshot. At the same time, Stormtiger struck him from behind with a massive blast of air, using the combined force of both claws.

Hookwolf speared into the van dead-on with the force of a thunderbolt, badly denting it as he knocked it over on its side, sending it skidding across the asphalt with a painfully loud screeching noise. He didn't waste time before he bounded over to the downed van, leaping up on its side and plunging a claw into the indentation. It was a testament to how durable it was that Hookwolf had to exert a decent amount of effort to rip even a small hole open.

Erickson was already in position, tossing the flashbang inside a moment later. After a couple of seconds, a resounding boom echoed from inside the van and Hookwolf tore open the back door to reveal the dazed and confused PRT officers.

His men began pulling them out, while Stormtiger's took care of the two in the front. They removed their sidearms, helmets and armor, the containment foam sprayers a couple were wearing, and every other piece of gear they had on. Soon enough, they were down to just the clothes they had been wearing underneath before they were shoved up against the van, guns trained on them. They were still reeling from the crash and the immediate flashbang after.

Hookwolf withdrew the metal back towards his core and brought flesh once more to the surface. He felt his body reform to its normal appearance, except for the steel he typically kept underneath his skin. He rose up from a crouch, Stormtiger at his back.

Two of his men entered the van and dragged something out, a body bag. A third man held something between his hands.

A head in a clear plastic cover. Cricket's.

Hookwolf closed his eyes briefly before he nodded, and they starting taking the body and the head towards the car parked around the corner. There were other body bags inside and his men got to work looking through them and carting them off.

"Looks like Jürgen's info on the route and time was good," Stormtiger commented, turning to look at him. Hookwolf nodded and Stormtiger idly kicked lightly at one of the PRT officers, who flinched but didn't say anything. "Hey, darkie. You know anything about this, what killed Cricket?"

The officer stared resolutely ahead, saying nothing. Air swirled around Stormtiger's hands, coalescing into a hazy claw. He lifted the nigger's head with the claw, forcing him to meet Stormtiger's eyes.

"We're in a bit of a rush here, understand," said Stormtiger softly. "So I don't have the time to be all _hospitable_ like I'd like to be. Still, you'd be surprised how much pain I can put you through without actually killing you."

The officer remained silent.

Stormtiger shrugged and the officer simply adopted a resigned look. The claw raised high into the air and Stormtiger paused for a moment.

"Wait!" interrupted one of the other officers, a burly, red-headed man. "I can tell you what happened. Just don't hurt Officer Tomlinson."

"Dickory—" the nigger growled.

"Goddamit, Tomlinson, I'm trying to keep you alive!" snapped the red-headed officer. "It's not like we know all that much anyway and it's nothing they can really use."

Hookwolf folded his arms. "Go on."

"We weren't the officers on the scene," the red-head said flatly. "All we know is that some Empire cape and several other Empire soldiers were killed by that apartment complex. No clue who, no idea what. Our only job was to take the bodies back to the PRT morgue."

Hookwolf studied the officer, who tensed upon meeting his gaze. Then he turned to Stormtiger and slowly shook his head.

"They don't know anything useful," he said. Truth be told, he was glad things hadn't gotten to the point that Stormtiger would need to use enhanced interrogation, nigger or not. Killing or maiming PRT officers or heroes tended to create too many complications for it to be worth it most of the time.

"Secure them," he said and his men proceeded to do just that, using the very zip ties and cuffs the officers had been carrying before dragging them back inside the van. Others were taking the gear they had collected from the PRT officers. The con-foam sprayers in particular would be rather useful, even if they didn't have a reliable means of getting ahold of more containment foam.

Erickson was approaching Stormtiger and him, pocketing a phone. They stepped away from the officers, outside of earshot.

"Just got off the phone with Jürgen," Erickson grunted. "He found some of Cricket's group that lived." He met Hookwolf's eyes. "He's saying they saw the cape in action, saw her kill Cricket. Hookwolf, they saw her _face_."

Hookwolf clenched his fists. "Where are they?"

"They went back to the safehouse for tonight," Erickson said. He eyed the officers who were still being cuffed. "The one just south of the Docks, off Saxon and Rosewood. They're all pretty badly banged up overall. I don't think they'll be any shape to talk for a few hours yet."

"What about Victor and Othala?" Stormtiger asked. "We could use a sketch artist and they could use a healer."

"They were out of town for the weekend," Hookwolf said, remembering what Victor had told him a few days ago about wanting some alone time for the two of them. "They'll be back around noon."

Hookwolf took a deep breath. "After we clean up and get out of here, everyone should take a breather. Take a few hours to rest. Catch a nap, get something to eat, refresh. Erickson, Stormtiger, I'll want to see both of you at that safehouse when Victor and Othala come back. Tell any of the men that need healing to come as well. Call it one o'clock to be safe."

Erickson nodded and whistled over to call his men. Stormtiger turned away, heading back towards his own troops.

Hookwolf stood in silence for several seconds, just breathing harshly in and out. He wanted nothing more than to get ahold of those soldiers and pry every last bit of information out of them, but it wouldn't accomplish anything to rush like this just yet. Cricket was dead and wouldn't be getting any deader.

He didn't _like_ the idea of delaying like this, but trying to fight on an empty stomach and a sleepy head was a foolish prospect for a warrior. Now was the time to conserve his strength, to bide his time. He could be patient.

For now.

He walked away from the nearly empty street, stepping out of the dim light of early morning and back into the shadows once more.

* * *

It was just before one in the afternoon when Hookwolf and Stormtiger entered the safehouse, an out of the ways bricked three-story office space that they owned. Erickson would be arriving a little later, along with the new recruit that had lost his ear.

Hookwolf cracked his neck as he surveyed the entrance hall, feeling a little more refreshed after having a chance to sleep and get something to eat before he arrived. The entrance itself looked fairly innocuous, to sell the impression that there was nothing unusual going on here. He saw Victor standing off to the side, looking at something on his phone. He was dressed in a black breastplate with a red shirt underneath as well as black slacks, a dark masquerade mask, lined with red highlights, covering the area around his eyes and nose. With all that, he gave off an aristocratic, Old World air.

As they approached, Victor pocketed the cell phone, running a hand through cropped, blonde hair. "Hookwolf. Stormtiger. Heard the news. Sorry to—"

"Othala's here?" Hookwolf said curtly. He wasn't in the mood to hear any sort of condolences.

Victor's pale blue eyes looked at him searchingly before he nodded. "We got here not long before you two. She's up in the medical room with what's left of Cricket's group," Victor said, picking up a black satchel and a portfolio bag before they walked towards the stairs together. "Three of them—there was a fourth, but he bled out a long time before we came here."

Hookwolf frowned. "Are they well enough to talk?"

"There's one that's healing up now that should be fine."

The three of them walked quietly up the stairs, other E88 personnel giving them a wide berth as they passed.

"Nice haircut," Stormtiger noted idly as they ascended.

Victor looked over at him, lips curled. "O likes it short."

They entered a small medical area on the second floor, with ten beds set out along with an array of first aid supplies and drugs set out. Three of the beds were occupied, one of the men on it shifting and moaning as a man in scrubs was busy attending to him. The second was resting on his back and the third man was concealed behind Othala, clad in a red bodysuit, her back to them.

"Othala," Hookwolf said and she turned her head, a questioning look in her eyes behind her black-and-red masquerade mask, the colors inverted from Victor's. Her gaze shifted over to Victor and she gave a slight smile.

She got up off of her chair, walking over and pressing herself up against Victor as they exchanged a kiss. Hookwolf let it go on for a couple of seconds before he coughed and they broke apart, Othala's cheeks reddened with embarrassment while Victor simply smirked.

Hookwolf gestured over to the men on the beds. "Which one's ready?"

"The one on the other bed," she said, pointing to her right. "I gave him a dose of regeneration a half-hour ago—he should be okay to move around a little."

"Talk to you in a bit, O," Victor said and Othala returned to attend to the other soldier she had been healing. Hookwolf approached the bed Othala had pointed to. A lanky, pale man was on his back, his arm in a cast with splotches of dried blood along his shoulders. As they approached, he gingerly sat up, slowly swinging his legs over the side.

"You're Cricket's?" Stormtiger asked.

The man grimaced. "Was. Name's Maxwell."

"You saw that cape that killed Cricket," Hookwolf said. It wasn't a question. "We need information. Come with us."

Victor and Stormtiger helped Maxwell to his feet and they left the medical room to head to a nearby office room, with a small central table, along with a desk with a computer and combination printer/scanner by the looks of it. Maxwell sat down across from Stormtiger at the table, looking warily at the three of them. Beside him, Victor took out a small laptop from his satchel, before retrieving a sketchbook, a drawing board, and several pencils out of his portfolio bag.

Hookwolf remained standing by the wall, arms folded. "Start from the beginning," he said. "How did the fight start?"

Maxwell looked nervously between the three of them. "We were… we were about to hit the apartments. Cricket wanted us to scope things out a bit, maybe shake up some of the locals before we split."

"How many of there were you in total?" Stormtiger asked.

Maxwell pursed his lips. "Uh… fifteen, sixteen total, not including Cricket? She had some of us scan the area around the apartments itself, around the alleys and shit. I was with the main group, ten of us including Cricket. We were going to do our thing when one of the other guys she sent out came in, screaming, saying something about some girl that killed three of ours."

"He was fucking hysterical," said Maxwell, shrugging. "Don't remember too much of what he was saying. It wasn't long after that before that girl came. Same one he was screaming about."

"The one that ended up killing Cricket?" said Hookwolf.

Maxwell nodded.

"What did she look like?"

"Uh," Maxwell rubbed his head. "It was still kind of dark. And I wasn't in the best position to see everything."

"Anything you can give us helps. Try to remember all you can," Victor said, twirling a pencil between his fingers.

"Um," Maxwell said, eyes narrowed in thought. "I think she was sort of pale, longish red hair. Some sort of white dress? She looked… slender. Not too thin, not too fat. Maybe… five feet three, four? Couldn't really hear what she was saying, but she sounded young. Teenager at the most. She wasn't wearing a mask but it was hard to see from where I was."

"Any distinguishing features?" Victor said. "Something that stood out?"

Maxwell bit his lip. "I didn't have a great angle but I could have sworn that… that she was missing a _nose_."

"That'll do it," Stormtiger muttered. "Can't be too many red-headed noseless teens in this city."

"Victor will do a more detailed sketch with you after," Hookwolf said, rapping his fingers against his arm. "She said she was ABB?"

Maxwell shrugged. "Couldn't really hear anything she said. Someone was calling her a kike, but we were just bullshitting, no idea who she was working with. With how dark it was, couldn't tell you if she was white or a heeb or a chink or a jap or a fucking yellow monkey. But seeing as how she turned up out of nowhere to fight us in the chink's territory and she's a cape in _this_ city… I guess she could be ABB."

Stormtiger made a non-committal grunt. "What happened with the fight exactly?"

"Well," Maxwell began. "Cricket told us not to get in her way. She wanted to fight her one on one. The girl didn't seem that hot—she had a gun, tried shooting Cricket a few times, didn't do much with it. They started fighting up close after that—girl had a knife—and I couldn't keep track of most of it. Cricket tossed the girl at a dumpster at one point before they started fighting again."

Maxwell chuckled nervously. "This part I _did_ have a chance to see a little better. The girl was fighting a lot better all of a sudden, but at one point, she just… she just let Cricket wail in on her. Let her stab her with those fancy scythes. Thought it was over right there, but same time Cricket did that, the girl did something to Cricket, made her blind or some shit."

Stormtiger and Hookwolf exchanged a glance. As formidable as Melody was in close-range combat, her biggest weakness had almost come down to being limited in terms of line-of-sight. Her incredible reflexes were almost entirely tied to it—take that away and she'd be significantly more limited in what she could do.

Maxwell was still speaking. "… fucking ripped out the scythes still in her and started attacking Cricket like crazy. Cricket was using the knife the girl had before, but Cricket was losing now. She… she got hurt bad enough that she had to stop. And then…"

Maxwell hesitated.

"Yes?" Stormtiger prompted.

"The girl…" Maxwell said, licking his lips, "…cut off Cricket's head. Used her own scythes to do it."

Hookwolf closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He exhaled loudly.

"One on one, steel against steel, in a fair fight to the death," he said roughly. "She always expected to die in battle someday. Sounds like she got a good sendoff."

No one said anything for a few moments.

"This girl, she was injured, you said?" Stormtiger finally asked.

"Yeah," Maxwell said. "She took hits that should have downed her, but she kept going. I didn't think she could heal up until a while _after_ I got the hell away."

"You didn't try to stop her?" Hookwolf said sharply.

"No, no!" Maxwell said, waving his hands. "Second we saw what that bitch did to Cricket, we started running over to finish her off. But, something really fucking weird happened."

"What?"

"Uh," Maxwell said, scratching his head. "She kind of let loose this big-ass lightning storm out of nowhere. Started blowing up cars and shit. Me and some of the others ran the hell away after that, didn't want to get fried."

Hookwolf narrowed his eyes but he gestured in a _move-along_ motion.

"Big fucking mistake that was," Maxwell said bitterly. "Ran right into a fucking ABB patrol barely a couple of minutes out. Got fucking slaughtered, ran off to recoup, Jürgen came to help us out later. And… that's how I got here," he finished lamely, shrugging his shoulders.

Hookwolf nodded. "Victor."

Victor leaned over and pulled out a sheet of paper from his sketchpad before attaching it to his drawing board. "Alright, I'm going to need you to…"

Hookwolf leaned back and closed his eyes, tuning out what Victor was saying, thinking over what Maxwell had said. There were still a lot of unanswered questions, including what kind of cape was apparently both a regenerator and an electrokinetic at the same time. And according to those chinks they had dealt with earlier, was apparently with the ABB, though she had gone through some kind of costume change.

Just who the hell _was_ this girl?

As Victor worked with the soldier, Hookwolf found himself thinking about Melody again. They had first met back in the ring, when they had still been in New York. That had been back when he was known as 'Killer Edge,' just another fighter in the underground parahuman fighting circuit. He had been a rising star in the cage, his power making him virtually invulnerable. Hitting him would literally be like hitting solid steel. He had gone ten straight matches without a single defeat.

Then he had fought Melody. And _lost_. She had kept out of his reach the entire time, superior reflexes and agility allowing her to keep pace with him. And even when he had transformed more of his body, she had blasted him with enough subsonic bursts that he had fallen over of his own accord out of sheer nausea. She had taken him apart in a way he hadn't expected, woken him up from his complacency.

Her victory over him had piqued his interest, but it wasn't her powers that he was fascinated most by. It was her mindset, abiding by the same warrior ethos that he lived and breathed. That was her most interesting—and attractive—attribute. Too many in the ring came in for just the quick buck or two. Only a few took it as seriously and passionately as she did, for the sheer uncomplicated joy of the fight.

A shieldmaiden after his own heart.

Over the weeks, one thing eventually led to another and one of their regular training sessions became rather... heated. The relationship ultimately didn't work out—for one, communicating was difficult when one of the partners was mute—but they didn't need something as flowery as romance for their bond to have meaning.

The fight was more than enough.

Eric had joined their little group soon after, his powerful aerokinesis well-suited to give him an edge in the ring and he too shared their warrior code. They had trained constantly, honing mind, body, and spirit for a single purpose. The three of them together had been unstoppable in the ring, their ascent meteoric with no sign of stopping. In a way, Hookwolf mused, that had been their downfall as well.

It had been Eric who had pointed it out, but the stadium manager had been giving them less and less money as time went by. Payments were delayed, often weeks at a time, with increasingly feeble excuses being offered. Hookwolf had learned the truth eventually—with how successful their little group had been in the ring, it had been a sucker's gamble to bet against them. The house was raking in less cash and the manager was trying to shift over attention to the other fighters, try to weed out the three of them. The nigger had been cheating them.

He remembered that night going to the manager's office in a rage, the two of them entering a shouting match. He didn't remember what it was that set off the spark, but by the time he was done, the office was painted with the nigger's remains. Out of spite, he had taken the entire night's earnings for the three of them.

Things had gotten hairy after that. Someone who knew the manager had contacted the PRT and the three of them had to go to ground, try to evade being caught. It was one of Eric's friends who ultimately helped them out, put them in touch with Kaiser. From there, the rest had been history.

Hookwolf had never been fond of all the colored shits that were around: the chinks, the niggers, or the spics, but he hadn't paid them much mind before. Kaiser had opened his eyes to the truth, to just how badly things were going under the name of 'tolerance.' Too many saw the Aryan struggle as just a matter of hate instead of the hope for taking humanity to the next level as it was. If the human race was to progress, the rot had to be cut out.

Kaiser had given a sympathetic ear to their plight. He had offered them protection, shelter, money, but most of all, a chance to do more than just play-fighting in a ring.

The three of them had started their journey with the Empire together, had traded blood and kills side by side. Along with Eric, Melody was the closest thing he had to a friend.

And some chink bitch of a cape had _killed_ her.

"Hookwolf? Stormtiger?"

He opened his eyes. It was Victor, waving a hand over, Maxwell having left the room by now, with Stormtiger by the door. He glanced at the clock—it had been at least thirty minutes since Victor had started sketching. As he came over, Stormtiger following, Victor turned his laptop around.

"You're done?"

"The basic sketch is done, but I'll want to run it through some software later. Add colors and compare with what the other men saw. Not sure how much use it will be however—he didn't really get a good look, though the nose thing will help," Victor replied. "It's just that I was browsing the PHO and I thought you two should see… _this_."

A grainy video popped up on the screen, the sound quality scratchy and odd. A video taken from a cell phone. He didn't understand what he was seeing at first until the camera zoomed in.

It was the fight with Cricket.

It was too dark to make out much of anything, but he could see some of the things Maxwell had mentioned, all the way up to the lightning storm, which seemed to almost devastate the surrounding area, lighting a number of cars on fire. Then he saw what had happened after Maxwell had split: the girl got up again, Cricket's kamas in her hands, flashes of light indicating shots fired.

She moved past them with ease, looking as if she was swaying around or beneath them… what? The next several seconds gave Hookwolf an odd sense of déjà vu as he watched her utterly destroy the remaining thugs. The last shot showed her back to the camera, red-haired and a bloodstained white dress.

"Hookwolf…" Stormtiger murmured.

"Yeah," he said. "Victor, rewind that."

"From the beginning?" Victor asked.

"No, right after all that lightning shit, right… there."

He watched the ensuing fight a second time to make sure he wasn't imagining things. Then a third, and a fourth, and finally a fifth to confirm. He wasn't hallucinating—something seriously wrong was going on.

The girl had been fighting exactly like _Melody_ did.

"What the fuck?" he whispered.

"What's it supposed to mean?" Stormtiger muttered.

"No fucking clue," Hookwolf said, shaking his head.

Victor looked between the two of them. "You saw something unexpected. Something—"

"Stop trying to cold read us, Victor," Hookwolf said wearily. "She was fighting like Cricket did at the end there. As if she was Cricket herself."

Victor frowned. "You're thinking she's able to steal skills, like I can?"

"Not sure," Hookwolf said, deeply disturbed. "Not enough information, even with that video."

"Anything else interesting on the thread?" Stormtiger said.

Victor shrugged. "Seems that the ABB is claiming her as theirs after all, or at least that's the word on the grapevine."

Victor moved his mouse over to check something else. He clicked through a few links before he stopped on something. "Huh."

Hookwolf eyed him. "What?"

Victor was frowning, staring at his screen. "What's Cricket's PHO user name?"

Hookwolf arched an eyebrow beneath his mask. "MMA Fanatiq, with a Q. Why?"

"Because her account was active just under an hour ago. Didn't make any posts, but that's when she was last online, according to the website."

Stormtiger stirred at that. "That's impossible. She's been dead for hours."

Victor spun the laptop around, pointing at a time and date beneath what looked like the profile page for one 'MMAFanatiq.' "Then who the hell logged into her account just now?"

Hookwolf didn't have a reply ready. The most natural explanation would be that someone had hacked her account, but Melody never even posted under her PHO handle. And that someone would do it _today_ , hours after she had died?

"I…" Hookwolf began, shaking his head. He didn't need more shit on his plate than there already was. "That's something we'll figure out later. You finish up here. I've got a phonecall to make."

Without preamble, Hookwolf stepped outside, Stormtiger following. He started heading down, past the first floor and over towards the basement. There was a cold room down below and as they approached, he took out his phone and dialed a number. It rang for a minute before it picked up.

"Æ _sir twelve, drei Loki Z_ ," he said.

There was a pause before a smooth voice spoke calmly over the speakerphone. " _Vanir five, acht Thor A_. _Hookwolf, I've been expecting you to call sooner_. _I imagine Stormtiger is with you?_ "

"Aye," Stormtiger said.

"Kaiser," Hookwolf said. "You've heard the news?"

" _Yes_ , _I did receive some information when I came back to the city this morning,_ " Kaiser said. " _I'm sorry to hear that Cricket was killed. It was during one of the raids you scheduled for last night, wasn't it?_ "

Hookwolf grimaced despite himself. He could hear the undercurrent of chastisement in Kaiser's voice and he couldn't blame him—ever since Purity had stepped down, Hookwolf had been made the Empire's front-liner, to secure and expand the upper parts of their territory.

Besides the cape who had done it, if there was anyone to blame for the way things had gone, it would come down to Hookwolf. He had been the one who had come up with the plan and Kaiser didn't need to come out and tell him that he had fucked up for him to _know_ that he had.

"Yes," Hookwolf said finally. "But, we just got some new information you might want."

" _Oh?_ "

"It was a new cape that did it. ABB."

There was silence over the line.

"We think she's a regenerator, not sure how strong," Stormtiger added. "Electrokinetic too and possibly a skill thief like Victor also. We 'questioned' a couple of chinks that told us she was ABB and she was wearing their colors last time they saw her. Word on the street apparently matches up as well."

" _That is… unexpected_ ," Kaiser admitted. " _I did not anticipate Lung to have acquired a new cape by this point. He has typically been rather reticent in that regard_."

"I guess the chink dragon changed his mind. Whoever she is, she took apart Cricket and at least six or seven others." Hookwolf growled. "They killed one of _ours_."

Kaiser remained silent for a while. " _I'll want to see the evidence you have, but if that's true… we cannot allow an insult of that magnitude to pass_."

Hookwolf smiled to himself. "They took one of ours, we take one of theirs?"

" _Yes,_ " Kaiser mused. " _Ordinarily, I would simply demand a weregild, but I would not trust the paper that animal would provide us, let alone that he would ever treat peaceably with us. No, we shall have to deliver unto him something simpler, something purer._ Reciprocity. _An eye for an eye, as they say._ "

Hookwolf felt an anticipation rising inside him, the metal along his shoulders growing slowly. To his side, he saw Stormtiger with his fists lightly clenched, forming his trademark claws.

"When can we do it?" Stormtiger asked after a moment.

" _These matters would need to be redressed soon, else the lesson will go unlearnt,_ " Kaiser replied. " _And yet, if we are to take the field, I would not have my soldiers enter the battle unprepared. Let us say… one week henceforth from now_."

Hookwolf growled in assent, the blood lust he had felt earlier during the raids stirring beneath his skin.

" _Unfortunately, I have some business to attend to,_ " Kaiser said. " _We'll discuss this matter and our plans when we re-convene in person tonight_."

The call shut off, leaving them in silence. He exchanged a glance with Stormtiger and they entered the cold room, the chill seeping almost to his bones. He should have brought a jacket before coming here.

On one of the tables near the center laid a figure, hidden beneath a white covering. Stormtiger strode over and gently removed the top portion, revealing a face. A neck brace provided the illusion that the head was still attached, but Hookwolf could see that there was something wrong, the head jutting off of the neck too far.

Cricket's face looked restful in death, eyes closed, and her hair untouched. Neither he nor Stormtiger said anything for a few moments.

"Brad…" Stormtiger began.

"She was one of ours, Eric," Hookwolf said. "One of the few who we could trust to have our back, absolutely."

"If there's a Valhalla," Stormtiger said, "she's in it. She's more than earned it." He patted the white linen covering her. "We'll see you on the flipside, Melody."

Hookwolf didn't reply, staring at Melody's dead face, burning it into his memory. He wouldn't do anything as silly as cry for her and he wouldn't have wanted her to do the same for him.

No, he'd honor the memory of their bond in a different way. A way that she would have understood and appreciated. Steel spikes jutted out of Hookwolf's hands, forming a claw and he gazed at it, looking back at Melody's face before he clenched his fist tightly with the sound of rattling nails.

Soon, he'd have a chance to find the cape that did this. Soon, he be able to hunt them down, tear them to pieces for killing his comrade-in-arms. He would fight alongside with the others against that dragon and his forces, pit his strength against theirs.

He had chosen his name after the hunter to rule hunters, the wolf. In the times before man mastered fire and steel, it was the wolves that held sway over them. It was the wolves that haunted their steps and were the subject of their nightmares. And it would be the wolf that would strike down the Allfather himself.

In a week's time, they would go for battle. In a week's time, he would show this city a glimpse of what it meant to live back in those times, a time of howling blood and clashing steel. A different time, a different age: where strength was the only criterion of worth. A sword age, an axe age. A wind age, a _wolf_ age.

Soon, Brockton Bay would have its foretaste of Ragnarök.

* * *

 **Major thanks to HaltCPM and VereorFaux for looking this over. And Arc 1's a wrap! Uh oh, Emma. Aspects of Hookwolf's personality here are drawn from 7.8 and 11.e of** _ **Worm**_ **and the last few bits are from 11.e. The description of Stormtiger is from 7.7. Victor and Othala's description is drawn from 15.3.**


	10. Ember 2-1

**Ember 2.1**

I almost felt as if I would collapse on myself, with only Taylor's form keeping me upright. I left wet spots along Taylor's hoodie, hiccupping as I tried and failed to reign in my sobs, muffling them in Taylor's shoulder. I trembled, my throat tight, and my eyes blurred. Taylor for her part wasn't doing much better, her entire body shivering as she wept, sniffling. We held onto each other like that for some time, neither of us able to move away from the other. I clung to Taylor as if grasping a lifeline, almost as if she would disappear if I wasn't holding on, that I wouldn't be able to find her again if I let go.

Taylor broke out of the embrace first, lightly pushing me away. She kept her hand tightly clasped onto my arm however. She stared at me, saying nothing as she breathed shallowly. Her wet, dark eyes were comically huge through her glasses from this close, tear-tracks running down her cheeks though she made no move to wipe at them.

She opened her mouth to speak before she closed it again, as if failing to find the words to say. She went through a few more false starts before finally managing to find her voice. "How… just… how?"

She pointed a quivering finger at me, as if accusing me, a manic glint lighting her eyes, her other hand tightening around my arm. It was clear that she wasn't going to let me go until I answered her.

There was a long pause, as I thought about what I could say, what I could do to explain… whatever the hell this was. There really wasn't an easy way to explain all this, given how ridiculous this whole situation really was.

"Emma," Taylor said in a low voice. "People don't just come back from the dead. How is this possible?" Her eyes bored further into me, the intensity of the dark gaze almost making me back up away from her. " _How_?"

The disbelief was writ along every line and curve on her face, prompting, no, _demanding_ that I respond. "Taylor… when I said I had changed, I meant that. I'm… I'm…"—why was this so hard?—"I have powers."

Taylor didn't say anything in reply, but I could see the shock growing in her eyes. I took that as a cue to continue. "I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but I think my powers let me survive. Or… let me come back."

Taylor tensed at the last bit, but she didn't move away. "I've never heard of a parahuman that's come back from the _dead_ ," she said, gripping my arm tightly. "And after all this time?"

The skepticism hurt to hear, I had to admit, but I couldn't blame her. It wasn't unexpected. After all, before today, she had thought I had been dead for all these months. Even I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around that fact. I knew that she needed more than words—she had to _see_.

"I think," I said, carefully removing my arm from Taylor's grasp, "it would be easier if I showed you instead."

I looked around, making sure no one else was watching. The kids below were still busy playing, oblivious to the two of us on the bridge. I pulled down the coat sleeve of my left arm, exposing bare flesh. Taylor observed me curiously as my other hand disappeared beneath the red coat. I withdrew the kukri, spots of blood I hadn't noticed earlier still flecked along the long blade, most of it welled along the notch near the handle.

Taylor's mouth hung open, eyes wide. "What—"

I plunged the point of the knife deep into my forearm, just above the inside of my elbow. I hissed with pain as bright red blood spurted and splashed—the artery had been cut clean through—peppering the coat with hot liquid before flowing down my arm to patter against the damp wood of the bridge. My fingers clenched sympathetically but I left my eyes on Taylor the whole time, who was still too stunned to react.

Gritting my teeth, I quickly dragged the tip of the kukri upward and out, tearing open a long gash along the length of my forearm. I looked down to see what I had exposed and I wish I hadn't. I could see blood-slick muscle connected to bone, rhythmically expanding and contracting with each movement of my arm and hand. All the while, great gouts of blood pulsed and spilled—the agony was almost dizzying, but I had already dealt with much, much worse. Compared to the kinds of things that had happened to me—or what I had done to myself—this wasn't even the worst of it.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" Taylor slapped down my hand, forcing me to drop the kukri, sending it to clatter unceremoniously onto the ground. A second later, she tackled me, making me fall flat on my back. She landed on top of me, keeping me down with her body weight. I groaned as my torn arm flopped against the ground, sending another spike of pain along my arm, as more blood flowed down onto the wood beneath.

She frantically slapped a hand down on the gash. There was too much for her to hope to contain and it spilled between her fingers, staining the sleeves and body of her hoodie. Her eyes wildly darted left and right, her glasses askew, her face contorted with panic. "No, no, no!" she said desperately. She lifted my injured arm off of the ground, keeping the limb pointed upward. "We've got to get something on the wound, it's bleeding too fast—"

"Taylor, look—" I began, trying to get up, but she easily pushed me back down with her other hand. I blinked in surprise—when had she gotten so strong?

"Stay still," she whispered forcefully before turning her head away. "Someone! Someone, please, we need help!"

She continued pressing down on the gash with her hands as she straddled me, pinning me beneath her. If I really fought back, I probably could have gotten out of it but I wasn't about to start a fight against my best friend.

That didn't mean I liked what she was doing right now, well-intentioned as it was. At the moment, I was more exasperated than I was actually in pain. That must have been my power starting to work, but at this rate, she'd be attracting unwanted attention.

I squirmed a little more, but Taylor only pushed her body weight further onto me. "Dammit Taylor, just take a look!"

She ignored me, still faced out past the bridge, probably looking at some of the people below. I took my free arm and placed it beneath Taylor's chin, turning it and forcing her to look at the wound. "Taylor, _look_."

She stared at the injury, blood already no longer flowing in great spurts. She removed her hand with a start as the gash healed, flesh, muscle, and bone twisting and rippling. Like a macabre zipper, the torn flaps of muscle and skin folded onto itself, almost fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Fresh, pale skin forced its way to the surface and within seconds, leftover blood aside, my arm appeared as if it had never been hurt, as if I hadn't taken a knife to my own arm.

"I – I—" Taylor stammered, leaning back away from me in shock. I pushed her off of me, taking care not to upset her balance. She didn't resist me and I got to my feet, looking down below, past the bridge. There were a few kids and parents gathered, more than one looking up in concern. I held my formerly injured arm, still wet with blood, firmly behind my back as I waved.

"Nothing to see here!" I said, trying to inject as much cheer as I could into my voice. "Just a little misunderstanding."

I got several dubious looks back—and one mother gave me a particularly dirty look, her eyes fixed on my (nose-less) face, before she stooped down to whisper something to her child. Soon enough, after several more seconds, the group went back to what they were doing, already forgetting about the two of us.

Disaster averted.

I breathed a sigh of relief, before turning to look back at Taylor, feeling more than a little annoyed. I took out the kerchief from my pocket, wiping away the blood off my arm best as I could. Thankfully, most of it had spilled off and hadn't clung to my arm, but the kerchief was heavy and wet all the same by the time I was done. I stooped down to pick up the kukri on the bridge, cleaning off some of the larger stains with the kerchief, before returning it back to underneath the coat. By this time, Taylor was getting to her feet, her expression slowly contorting to anger, her brown hoodie tarnished by scattered splotches of blood.

"What the _fuck_ was that all about?" she snarled, moving back towards me.

"I've got healing powers, as you can see." I shrugged, wringing out the kerchief, blood dripping off of the wet cloth. "I needed a way to show you."

" _What_?" Taylor glared at me, eyes blazing with anger. "You cut open your arm because you needed to prove a _point_?"

I rolled my eyes as I put away the kerchief and rolled up my coat sleeve. "It wasn't a big deal. Besides, I'm not the one that suddenly went hysterical and starting screaming for help."

"Emma," Taylor said in a low voice, "what do you expect a normal person to do when someone is bleeding to death all over them?"

"Hey," I said defensively. "I thought it would be the fastest way to show you my powers. I mean, would you have believed me if I just told you that I could regenerate? How else was I going to convince you?"

"You couldn't warn me in advance?" Taylor demanded. "Or make a small cut instead? Emma, you took out a huge knife out of nowhere and ripped open your arm. Who the hell _does_ that to themselves?"

Oh. _Oh_.

Now that I thought more about it…

Okay, maybe it _hadn't_ been the smartest idea to try to show off my powers right above of a nearby crowd and without warning Taylor no less. More to the point, I had barely been bothered by the thought of cutting open my arm—the pain had almost been an afterthought, than any real incentive to not do it. I had done it almost without thought or deliberation, as if there hadn't been anything out of the ordinary about it, as routine as putting on a T-shirt.

I had healing powers sure, but there had been no need to take a knife to my arm to prove something. What kind of person defaulted to self-mutilation as their _first_ option?

What in the _fuck_ had I been thinking?

What was I becoming?

"I thought… I thought you were dying, Emma," Taylor said, breaking me out of my reverie. I was startled to see that her eyes were wet, holding back tears. Had I missed that earlier, when Taylor had been angry? She blinked several times in quick succession to clear them. "I thought I was going to lose you again."

Ouch.

Now I just felt like a piece of shit.

No doubt she was still struggling with the shock of seeing her friend come back from the dead after nine months… I mean, it sounded insane just thinking about the idea of it. From her perspective, it must have seemed like I was killing myself, that I was dying… _again_. Worst of all, it would have been right after she had seen me again, alive, after all this time. It was one thing to lose a friend—to lose them twice over was unthinkable.

I hadn't even _considered_ Taylor's feelings right then before I had taken up the knife. The guilt burned in my gut—what the hell kind of friend was I to do something like that to her?

"Taylor," I said, my throat tight. "I'm so sorry… I wasn't even thinking—"

Taylor held up a hand, cutting me off. "It's… it's alright." Her voice trembled despite her best efforts. "I get the picture anyway. Can I…?"

She gestured towards my arm and I pulled down the sleeve again. There was still some blood sticking to it, but it seemed as unblemished and intact as ever, before I had taken the kukri to it. Taylor softly rubbed her hands along the path where the gash had been earlier, looking intently at my arm.

"You can't even tell it was cut," she said, no small amount of wonder in her voice, releasing my arm from her grasp.

"I don't know how it works exactly," I said quietly, "but I'm guessing it has something to do with why I'm even around here to begin with. Why I was able to come back, I guess."

Taylor raised her head, peering at me intently. "How did you… how did you get here? Why now, why _today?_ "

"It's… complicated," I said lamely. "It's been about nine months for you and everyone else, right? That's how long it's been since I… died."

"…Yes."

I exhaled sharply. "It's been less than a day for me."

Taylor cocked her head, looking at me quizzically. "I don't get it."

I averted my gaze, looking down at my hands. "I don't really understand either. Taylor, the last thing that I remember happening before today was… the attack." I looked back up to face her. "You know the one."

"You mean…" she said slowly, eyes growing larger as she processed my words. "You mean… the last thing you were part of before today was… that? Back when you… _died_?"

There was a mixture of shock and disbelief on her face, her eyes bright and her mouth slightly open. "How is that—"

"Possible?" I said. "Taylor, the first thing I woke up to today was the inside of my own grave." I smiled wryly. "If you go to the cemetery, you can probably still see the hole in the ground. I had to dig—" I turned away from her, the memory of the climb coming back to me.

I tried to push out the image from my head. "It's been nine months for you, but for me… I remember the… the attack as if it was only hours ago."

She stepped around to face me, looking at me more closely, inspecting my face. "That's… unbelievable."

"I don't understand this," she said, slowly shaking her head. "Emma, I saw them put you in the ground. I saw your… I saw your _body_ , Emma."

I flinched. "You mean what was left of it."

"Yes," Taylor said quietly. "They… it was going to be a closed casket service, but your sister convinced your parents not to. That… that we needed to see you one last time before… before they put you under. It… really was a beautiful service."

Hearing that made me want to cry again, burst into another stream of tears. Anne, who I had drifted further and further away from, did that for me? I inhaled deeply before looking back at Taylor. She was staring at me, examining me carefully.

I could see the reservation in her eyes, some sort of resistance to my presence, as if I was a figment of her imagination. She hadn't fully accepted the truth of what I was saying.

For a moment, I felt a hot, hot rage inside me, that even after opening myself up to her like that—figuratively and literally—she would still have doubts. I knew that anger: it was the same sort of fury that let me survive—or kill—all the things I had faced so far. And I'd rather take the knife to myself again before I would let Taylor or anyone else I cared about become the target of that fury.

I gave a long exhale, let my anger flow out with my breath. There was still one other trick up my sleeve, my ace in the hole.

"Taylor," I said, catching her attention. "Do you remember the dress your Mom gave me for my twelfth birthday? The white one with all the lace?"

She seemed startled at my mention of it, but she nodded all the same.

I opened up the red coat and her eyes grew wide when she saw what was underneath. Her eyes took in the ruined lace, discolored by dark, dried blood, torn badly at several spots with traces of dirt spattered around. But all the same, she ran her fingers along it, feeling the fabric of the dress between her fingers.

"We buried you in this," she murmured. "You loved this dress."

"Yes. I…" I swallowed. "I still do."

At that, she looked up at me. I could see the battle in her eyes, the hope and the doubt warring with each other. She wanted to believe me—already, there was too much I had shown her for it to be a coincidence. But it was so unbelievable an idea to consider all the same. For a moment, I wasn't sure which side would win.

Then she put a hand to my cheek and I got my answer.

"It really is you, Emma," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. And I felt mine do the same, my sight blurring.

"Yeah," I said in a rasp, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak. "It's… it's me."

"It really _is_ you!" she said, laughing even as tears spilled, before she pulled me into another hug, this one stronger and tighter than the one before. I wrapped my arms behind her back, fiercely returning the embrace, and my heart felt as though it might burst.

I had been through a lot. People had done horrible things to me—and I had committed acts that barely qualified as human, if not worse. There were still a lot of issues to work through. I couldn't pretend to have considered, much less dealt with even half of them. There was no telling if I really be okay, if I would ever feel like Emma Barnes again.

But for now?

For now, I had my friend back, and that was what mattered.

After a minute or so passed, we stepped out of the hug. I chuckled a little as I wiped away my tears. Finally, after everything that had happened, I had found someone that I could lean on, someone I knew that had my back and a small smile came to me. I drank in her appearance, glad to see her familiar form once more.

I hadn't found Mom, Dad, or Anne. They weren't even in the same city anymore, let alone the same state. I had thought I would have been all alone here, with no one familiar to reach out to, that I'd be stuck by myself with whoever or whatever I was now.

But, just when I had been ready to give up any hope, just when I was resigned to being alone, I had found _Taylor_. She had always been dependable like that. And I had found her _here_ , the very same playground, the same bridge where she had confided in me—the same place where we might have shared the most important moment in our friendship.

"Hey," Taylor said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder, as if to reassure me. "Why don't we go to my house? We can talk more there."

Taylor was still smiling, but there was something else there: her eyebrows were scrunched up, her eyes taut with worry. She was happy, but not satisfied by a longshot. I could tell that she still had questions she wanted to ask me—it wasn't as though I had clarified everything. I hadn't told her everything I had gone through since… the alley, since this entire mess began. I hadn't told her all the things I had been through: what had been done to me, what _I_ had done to others.

I had changed—I _was_ changing—in ways I could barely catalogue, could hardly keep track. Earlier, I had cut open my arm on a whim, and that hadn't even been the most fucked up thing I had managed to put myself through. Could I explain that to her? Would she be in a position to understand? Either way, I had a feeling that it wouldn't be a fun conversation.

"Yeah," I said finally, shaking my head to clear my thoughts. "Yeah, yeah. Let's… let's do that."

We headed past the bridge and down the play structure. More than one stray eye followed our exit, but we weaved around the children and their parents, leaving the park behind us.

* * *

Taylor didn't say anything as we headed towards her house, content to walk in peace. The minutes passed by quietly, the oppressive silence like a leaden weight on my tongue, keeping me from speaking. It wasn't as though we could make small talk—I mean, what did you even say in a situation like this?

Looking at her more closely as we walked, I could see some more differences now that I hadn't paid attention to at the park. Taylor had always been fairly thin and she still was, but now, she seemed more filled out, more solidly built than she had been before. And the last time I had seen her, the two of us had stood at the same height, shoulder to shoulder. Now, she had to be at least a good three or four inches on me. Her face had more definition now, with sharp and angular lines, giving her an almost sculpted look.

However, it was her clothes that drew my eye the most. In some ways, they said more about her than the physical changes she had undergone. Before Taylor had left for nature camp, she had shown me what she was planning on wearing. She had been so genuinely excited then, something she rarely was these days with her mom gone.

Correction: _those_ days.

I still remembered it clearly—she had worn the T-shirt she had ordered from the camp organizers, a vivid light blue with the camp logo front and center, as well as gray shorts that ended just above her knees, and a pair of cute sandals we had picked out from the Market a few weeks prior. I had even helped braid her dark, curly hair into a pair of loose pigtails that swung freely. Between her clothes and her almost rail-thin frame on top of it, she had seemed so child-like, as if she was still only eight or nine, not a teenager.

That had been typical of her, for her to go against the norm the way she did. The other girls in our class and social circle (and myself included to be honest) would try to look more adult, to match our style and fashion after the latest celebrity in the vogue. We'd lather on the foundation and mascara, pass around the most recent issue of _Elle_ or _Glamour_ , trade beauty products on the sly, and compare notes on what we were wearing for the day.

Taylor instead had stayed out of most all of that, made her own path. You couldn't miss her: she was the thin, gawky girl who'd wear friendship bracelets and lug around backpacks with logos from old 90s cartoons. It would frustrate me sometimes, I had to admit, that Taylor didn't have the same interest in the latest in fashion trends like I did, but that was part of how Taylor was and I had learned to accept that about her.

Where everyone else was racing to grow up, to prove themselves to be more woman than girl, Taylor seemed perfectly content to stay as the perpetual preteen. We were all racing towards adulthood, trying to look and act mature, but Taylor played no party to that.

Now, though?

Now, Taylor _looked_ her age, maybe even older. Only the skin on her face and hands were exposed—everything else was concealed beneath drab clothes: a dark brown hoodie over a pair of faded, gray jeans. The muted colors gave her a gloomy appearance, one not helped by the flat and somber expression on her face.

It wasn't any one feature that stood out, but it was the combination that created the effect—her clothing, her stance, her voice, her tone, and more. If you had placed this Taylor against the one I had seen last, you might need to take more than one look to realize that they were the same person.

The more I considered it, the more the contrast disturbed me. I had talked to Taylor on the phone not that long ago and the difference between her then and this subdued, silent person couldn't be more stark. And yet, while it had been mere hours for me, it had been months for her. A lot could happen in nine months.

Had things really changed that much? Just what had happened to Taylor?

She kept walking, seeming to be deep in thought, not having noticed my impromptu examination. By now, we were coming up onto her house. The afternoon sun hung at our back, casting a golden glow over the front garden. We headed up along the walkway leading up to the steps, Taylor taking out her keys from her pocket.

Taylor glanced over at me. "Did you come here earlier?"

"Twice. Once in the morning and then not long before I went to the park." I scratched my head bemusedly. "I, uh, tried to find your spare key earlier. You know, the one you keep under the—"

"The off-color stone in the back?" Taylor smiled faintly. "Dad lost his key last Friday, so he's been using the spare instead. He said he'd get a replacement this week." She unlocked the door, before opening it and holding it for me.

"Thanks," I said, gingerly stepping across the threshold and into her house. From what I could see, the front hall was the same as ever: the shoe rack was in the same place where it had been since last time, the ceiling light overhead was the same, and the mirror on the wall…

I stopped and stared.

For a while, I had been used to wearing makeup every day. Ever since I became twelve, I would religiously apply my makeup every morning after showering and doing my skincare. I'd wake up an hour earlier than everyone else to have the time to do it exactly right.

I'd obsess over getting precisely the right amount of foundation on, making sure I properly highlighted just how I wanted it, and would take care not to overdo my blush or eye shadow. I would give Dad neuroses at times with how much I'd fixate on getting everything as perfect as possible before heading to school—my hair, the clothes I was wearing, even the shoes or sandals I took for the day.

That had been back when the biggest things I had been scared of were failing high school algebra or getting acne—before the attack, before things had… changed. Sure, I had seen myself earlier—first, a reflection off of Cricket's kama and then later at Fugly Bobs. But, that had been an image off one of the windows, obscured by the sun's glare, and not at all in focus. I hadn't been able to make out details, couldn't really tell how I looked now.

The mirror left no ambiguity.

Without makeup to alter my appearance, I no longer had the even, dewy toned skin I had cultivated— instead, I was paler, not quite porcelain white, but approaching it. Slight bags hung beneath my eyes and my lips seemed flat and dry. My red hair was caught up in a snarl of kinks and tangles, giving me a frayed and frazzled look, lending me an almost frenzied appearance.

But, of course, it was what was in the middle—or what _wasn't_ —that held my attention. My nose had been torn almost clean off, with barely any remnants left, only a mockery of the bridge left near the top, between my eyes. Before, where there should have been the soft, sloping curves that tapered up into the point of my nose, there now was a triangular, ragged hole. A red mass of scarred tissue lay beneath, with only a thin plate of bone in the center to divide it in two.

Before, my appearance had been a point of pride and everyone knew it. Maybe I was being arrogant, but I'd like to think that I had been the best looking girl in my junior high school. Taking modelling classes had just been a natural extension of my passion and interests. Taylor hadn't been much for dolling herself up, but even she appreciated the time and effort I put into it.

All of it gone within a single stroke of a rusted knife.

I was like a caricature of a person now, something lifted off of the pages of a freakshow advertisement. Sure, there was a skeleton of who I was, the core structure of my appearance was left intact; you could still tell that I was Emma Barnes, if you had seen me before. But it was the details that had utterly changed, that could never again be the same.

The details made the difference.

My feelings and thoughts were in a jumble. There were so many words I could use to try to describe it: fear, resentment, anger, hate maybe. But, they all felt too hollow, too cheap to capture the entirety of my feelings. Instead, there was a smothering, choking dullness, a sort of sluggishness that clouded my senses and slowed my thoughts to a crawl, as if someone had pried open my skull and replaced my nerves with molasses.

A word slowly drifted to the surface—a shift in perspective, an idea. This felt like… it felt like…

Defeat.

Someone was shaking my shoulder and I finally tore my eyes away from the mirror.

"—Emma? Emma!"

I turned to look at Taylor, her face drawn up with worry. I absently wiped at my eyes, surprised to find that they were dry. For as easy as tears came to me, I was unable to produce any now. Not like crying had done me much good before.

She shut and locked the door behind us, before putting a hand to my back. She squeezed lightly. "You okay?"

"I'm good." I muttered after a few seconds. Her expression told me that she was unconvinced but she opened the door leading to the kitchen all the same.

Taylor's house wasn't like most homes. Usually, the living room would act as the central area, but in the Hebert's home, it was the kitchen that served the role instead. There were doors leading directly to the front hall, the basement, the living room, and to the backyard. You couldn't even access the living room from the front hall—you had to pass through the kitchen first to get to it. The blinds were shut, making the room a little dark and Taylor ended up turning on the lights.

There was a bookshelf by the fridge, containing rows of cookbooks, printouts, binders, and folders. Pots and other containers were stacked along a rack, with pots and other utensils hanging underneath. In the center of the room was a kitchen table, covered by a simple beige tablecloth. The entire arrangement was neat and orderly—probably the remaining influence of Taylor's mom.

Taylor placed her keys and a wallet on the kitchen counter and then gently guided me towards the table. She paused before waving a hand towards my coat. "Do you want to…?"

I got the message. I opened up the coat and removed the kukri, placing it on the table. After a moment's indecision, I also withdrew the twin kamas from the harness I had strapped on, blood still streaked along the edges—mine and Cricket's. I placed the short scythes beside the kukri on the table, Taylor's wide eyes watching all the while. I unhooked the harness as well, tossing it beside the three weapons I had laid out before taking a seat. I gave Taylor a look, awaiting a response.

"I'll make us some tea," Taylor said ultimately, pointedly looking away from the weapons.

"Fine." I slouched forward in my chair, tracing the red swirls on the tablecloth with my index finger. Taylor looked at me dubiously, eyebrows arched, and lingered by the table for a moment before heading for the stove.

She began preparing the tea, leaving me in an uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by the sounds of boiling water and pouring liquid. My thoughts refused to move in any particular direction—instead, I felt… lost. As Taylor prepared the tea, I remained stuck on that precipice, the minutes passing by in a dull haze, idly following each intricate pattern on the tablecloth.

A mug was suddenly clunked down in front of me, startling me out of my brooding. Black liquid sloshed inside the cup, steam wafting off of the surface. Taylor push away the weapons I had placed on the table before taking a seat across from me, an identical-looking mug held in her hand. At some point, she had taken off her hoodie, now clad in a green T-shirt.

"Black tea, milk, no sugar." She hesitated before asking, "That's how you like it, right?"

"Yeah. Your preference too, isn't it?" I took an experimental sip, my tongue burning from the scalding heat. The pain rapidly faded, swallowed up by my power.

Huh, that was neat. I wonder if I could use the same trick with spicy foods. I took a longer pull, the strong, rich flavor drowning out the heat, which my power took care of quickly enough. Taylor's eyebrows arched at the display, her own mug of tea set aside as she waited for it to cool.

I shrugged. "Perks of being a parahuman," I said in a lame attempt at a joke and Taylor's lips curled slightly in response. Her smile died when her gaze flicked over to the weapons on the table, before returning to meet me, a questioning light in her eyes. She bit her lip uncharacteristically, as if unsure what to do next.

"Emma…" she said slowly. "Where did you get… all that? Where did… where did all that blood come from? Emma, what _happened_ to you?"

I nearly dropped my mug.

Pain, pain, pain. The clash of steel on steel, a decapitated corpse. Dirt entombing me, choking me—I shuddered and closed my eyes, as the images flashed through my mind.

For a moment, I wanted to huddle in on myself, ignore what Taylor was saying, ward off the memories that she had called back up to the surface. I closed my eyes and counted to five. Thankfully, Taylor hadn't said anything, pretending as if I hadn't done anything odd.

I hated myself for being weak like this.

I couldn't afford to lose myself like that every time I… _God dammit_ , every time I had to think about the attack. It might have been nine months in the real world, but for me, it was still only a few hours ago, the terrifying beginning to this nightmarish journey.

If only we hadn't taken that street or if I had decided to stay home that day or even if we had headed out a little later than we had planned… any of that would have let us avoid _them_. Then none of this would have happened—I would have home talking to Taylor on my cell phone, waiting for my best friend to come home, not sitting across from nine months later after I had come back from the fucking _dead_.

If I could undo this, I would. If there was a way to turn back time, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But, I wasn't an idiot. There was no undoing this, no rewinding the clock. Things _were_ different now. The world had changed; _I_ had changed. And for as much as I had changed on the outside, as ugly and twisted as my appearance had become, I had a feeling it was a mere sideshow to the changes happening inside me. I was becoming something different, something baser and more primal, and the thought of that terrified me: that the old Emma Barnes was dead and I was what was left.

I had no idea how what to tell Taylor. I didn't even know where to begin, let alone how to put it into words. Could I explain to her how I had broken, the pain and suffering I had gone through? Could I tell her that her formerly-dead best friend was now a killer, guilty of murdering over thirteen people? Would she judge me for that, would she condemn me for it?

It would have been easy to ignore Taylor's question. I could play on her sympathy, say that I wasn't feeling well. Taylor would understand—her best friend had come back from the dead; how could she refuse? The temptation was there and it wouldn't take much to grasp ahold of it.

And yet, I'd be running away from myself just as surely as I'd be running away from Taylor. I owed her an answer, to give her some way of making sense of things, for as much as I had flipped her life upside down by coming back. But more than that, I owed _myself_ an answer. I had been avoiding it as I could, just blocking it out. And I could do that again—defer it for another time, another place.

But, I was tired of feeling terrified in my own skin. I couldn't afford to keep running away.

Talking to Lisa earlier had helped, hadn't it? Maybe… just maybe, by answering Taylor, I could come to terms with what had happened: that by giving voice to the events, that I could come to accept them, that they wouldn't seem as bad anymore.

"Emma," Taylor said, her face drawn in regret and her eyes filled with concern. "Do you want to have a lie down? I can get you a change of clothes and—"

"No." I shook my head. "I owe you some answers, Taylor."

Taylor placed a hand over mine and squeezed sympathetically. "You don't have to do this, Emma. It's alright."

I met Taylor's eyes, let her see how serious I was. "No, no. I _want_ to do this."

She looked at me searchingly before she finally nodded, though I could still see the doubt on her expression. What exactly should I say, where should I start?

The beginning seemed like a logical enough point.

"How much… how much do you know about what happened when I… died?"

Taylor froze, her mug held halfway up to her lips. She carefully set it down on the table. "The news reports said a little. I know…" She hung her head, didn't meet my eyes. "I know it happened right after you were on the phone with me. Your dad… he never told us what exactly happened."

I took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay."

"Emma, you don't have to—"

"Taylor," I said simply and she stopped talking. I leaned back in my chair, looked at the ceiling. I idly noticed that there was a new ceiling light. Had Mr. Hebert replaced the old one?

We drank our tea some more, neither of us saying anything. After a while, I began speaking. "Dad had taken a side path through one of the alleys to get home, one of his shortcuts. Stupid." I took another pull of my tea, let the burning heat pour down my throat. "They blocked one end with a dumpster, other end with their van." I paused. "I hung up on you then."

Taylor paled, but didn't say anything.

I spoke faster, forcing the words out between my lips. "Dad tried to use our car to move the dumpster; it didn't work. He told me to call the police—I'm not sure why I wasn't able to. It was hard to hit the buttons for some reason." I took another sip of tea, didn't say anything for a few seconds. "That's when they broke the window, dragged me out by my hair. I remember it hurting so much and I was afraid I'd get cut on the glass. I… I had to undo my seatbelt."

Why had I done that? I leaned back in my chair, thought about that moment again. "It was like… like I was _helping_ them get me out, but I wanted the pain to stop. They pulled me straight out of the window, tossed me to the ground."

I closed my eyes, re-watching the mental tape in my head. "I was really out of it then, I think. I don't think it had registered to me at that point what was going on, what was happening. I mean… they had taken my jacket and all I could think about was I hoped that they hadn't messed it up. Fucked up, right?"

Taylor didn't reply so I went on. "There were five of them—three guys and two girls. One of them cut… cut my hair. It was the girl, the one who took my jacket, Y—"

The knife cutting through, the girl's smile.

I had to stop speaking, opened my eyes to try to escape the images. Taylor was silent, her lips drawn flat, her eyes downcast.

"Yan," I managed to say. "I told them… I told them not the face. That I'd… that I'd do anything if they didn't touch the face." I let loose a short, barking laugh. "You can guess what they wanted next."

"They held me down," I said, a trace of the white noise from before coming back to me, leaving me in a daze. "Two on each arm, Yan held my head between her knees. They had someone guarding Dad and the last one… the last one was L-L-L-"—just say the damn name, Emma!—"Lao. The one with the bandanna."

I continued speaking, as if getting it out faster would make it easier. "He gave me a choice. Nose, eye, mouth, or ears. He said that Yan needed to show that she was ABB material, that she needed to step up. He'd let me choose which part she'd… which part she'd get to cut off."

Taylor stirred, her grip around my hand tightening. I still couldn't see her face, her long hair concealing it from view. "He promised me he'd let me go if I chose. Otherwise, she'd get to pick, maybe take all of them. It still didn't seem real then. Like… there was someone else there and I was just watching. Like it wasn't happening to me and I'd go back… go back to being the regular old me. I mean, bad things happened to other people, not someone like me." I closed my eyes. "That approach didn't last long. _They_ didn't give me the time."

I thought about the cape I had thought I had seen, the hallucination I had concocted to create the hope of an escape. Taylor didn't need to know about that—I didn't need to add schizophrenia on top of the other issues I already had.

"So, so, so"—why was it so hard to speak all of a sudden?—"I… chose. Yan, she, well, she—"

I broke off, the words like acid on my tongue, as if saying what had happened would make it more real, would _validate_ it in a way I didn't want to. I felt tears gathering at the corners of my eyes and I savagely wiped them away.

A distant part of me still hoped that all of this was still yet a dream (or nightmare), and I would wake up to be the regular old Emma Barnes again. I brutally quashed that hope back down. That kind of thinking hadn't worked in the alley and it wouldn't work here either.

"It's alright," Taylor said softly, catching my attention, her eyes wet. A tear fell down her cheek—had she been crying all this time? "Emma, you don't have to keep doing this. We can—"

"No." I coughed, before speaking more forcefully. "No. I'm going to say this once, the whole thing, all the way through. Or I'm never going to say it at all."

"It took her a while, I think," I said, trying my best not to cry, not waiting for Taylor to respond. "The knife hadn't been very sharp and she… she wasn't experienced at it." There was a tightness in my throat, making it difficult to continue. "You can... you can see the results."

We didn't say anything for a few seconds. "Lao… he… he wasn't satisfied." I clenched my jaw. "He wanted an encore, that Yan had been too _soft_ on me. When I asked about his promise, he said that… he said that he had _lied_."

I felt a trace of that same fury from earlier, a shadow of the same shift I had gone through back then. It took me a minute to master myself, to not rip myself away from Taylor's grasp and tear apart the house around her. "That… changed things," I said, through gritted teeth. "It changed _me_. I… Taylor, I _became_ something. What you saw in the park, when I cut open my arm? At the alley, I was _worse_ than that. A lot worse."

"I dealt with Yan first, smashed her head against the wall. Lao came next—I scratched out one of his eyes." I spoke mechanically, as if reciting from a script, as though as I reading and narrating a story about someone else's life. "I went for Yan's knife, but one of the other thugs reached me first, stabbed my stomach. I… I bit off of his nose. He stopped fighting after that."

Taylor's hand trembled beneath mine and I had to force myself to keep going. I had already gotten this far. "I dealt with the other girl next—cut her throat out, used the knife the other thug had stabbed me with. It was… it wasn't hard. I don't think I was feeling any pain at that point. Adrenaline rush, I guess. The other thug jumped me, tried cutting my face. I didn't let him."

I continued, the words coming out in a rush. "He went for my stomach next, stabbed me a bunch of times—that's what ultimately… killed me later. Stupid." I chuckled lightly, though there wasn't anything funny about it. "He actually thought I still cared about what happened to me at that point. I gouged his eyes out with my thumbs—made it easier to stab him through his chin with a knife."

"Emma, you don't—"

"Let me finish," I growled, removing my hand from hers, and Taylor stopped speaking. "Finished off Lao—cut his throat. The thug whose nose I bit off was already gone. There was only… only Yan left. Did… did the news say what happened to her?"

Taylor shook her head.

"Nose, eye, mouth, ears," I said flatly. Taylor's eyes widened as she got it.

"It wasn't difficult," I mused. "Looking back on it… what I was able to do to them… I think it came down to how each of us approached the problem. They had been fighting as if they had something to look forward to, like they couldn't give their all without risking something vital. By that point, I didn't have anything to lose. That's why they lost. It did cost me my life though."

I closed my eyes. "That's when I… when I 'triggered,' I guess that's what they call it. When I got my powers... same time I died."

The silence hung between us, a sort of invisible tension. I licked my lips, struggling to get the next words out. "And that's when I woke up to see the inside of my own grave."

I kept speaking, relaying the horrific events I had gone through—the things I had faced, what I had done. I told Taylor how I had to force myself up to and past my limits to escape my grave, how the Empire thugs had tried to rape me and the brutal way I had taken them out. I told her about the fight with Cricket, how I had to sacrifice my body to beat her, even how I was able to gain her power—Taylor's eyes nearly grew to the size of saucers once she digested _that_ particular tidbit—and the fights afterward. I explained how easily violence came to me now, how I had nearly killed an enforcer in the middle of broad daylight just because he had pissed me off.

And as I spoke, as I told a tale of violence and death, of the depravity of my enemies and myself, there was a growing sense of relief. It was almost as though I was externalizing my issues, foisting them off of myself. That by speaking about them, I no longer had to be trapped with them inside my head, that by bringing the stories out into the world, it was no longer only about me.

In a funny way, it was almost like what I had tried back in the alley: that by telling the story as I was, I was narrating what had happened to someone else, that I could distance myself from my own actions. Taylor let me ramble on and speak without interruption, saying nothing.

"And so that's what I am, Taylor," I concluded. "That's how I got here: the weapons, the coat, the blood, everything. I've – I've done things, Taylor. I've been shot and stabbed, mutilated and disemboweled, and I've done just as worse to others—and myself. I've killed thirteen people with about as much hesitation as stepping on a bug. And the worst part is? I don't even feel that bad about it—it's not like I feel guilty… it's more like… like there's something wrong about the fact that I _don't_ feel bad about it."

I had my eyes closed the entire time—I didn't want to her expression. I wouldn't be surprised if she was horrified—disgusted even. But I didn't want to see that on her face; to see even a trace of rejection… I wasn't sure how I would react. Maybe it was cowardice, but I didn't feel strong enough to face something like that. Not now, maybe not ever.

I chuckled bitterly. "I'm – I'm fucked up, aren't I? Totally, completely—"

"Emma," Taylor said, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. " _Shut up_."

I opened my eyes, startled. Taylor had gotten off of her chair at some point and was right in front of me. I could see her large eyes, reddened from crying, a fresh pool of tears welled near the corners.

"Shut up," she repeated under her breath, before throwing her arms around me, pulling me tight against her.

I was stunned, unable to react, simply allowing myself to be held. My eyes grew hot and a low moan escaped my throat. I tried to stop myself, but I felt so _tired_ —not in body, but perhaps in spirit. I began bawling, putting my arms around Taylor, releasing myself to the tears. There was no dignity or restraint: it was the sort of crying an infant or a toddler might produce. I felt as though the tears would tear out gouges down my cheeks and I cried and cried. I don't think I had ever cried this hard before.

Taylor rubbed my back soothingly, letting me spend my sorrow against her. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally broke away from her, still hiccupping every so often as I breathed heavily. I was embarrassed to see that the shoulders and back of her T-shirt were practically soaked in liquid, but she paid it no mind. She wiped at a few stray tears of her own, before clearing her throat and managing a small smile.

I laughed tearily in response, using the corner of my coat sleeve to clear the rest of my tears. A sense of relief was washing over me and I returned her smile. We didn't say anything for a while, simply smiling at each other like something out of a sappy Hollywood film. But, at that moment, I'd take a hundred sappy films if they could make a moment like this happen. And for now, I was content to keep on smiling.

It wasn't made to last.

There was a clicking noise, shaking us out of our trance. I turned to see the back door handle rotating, before the door opened, letting summer sunlight stream through. A man in a short-sleeved button-up shirt and khakis stepped inside, a satchel bag hung about his shoulder, a plastic bag held in one hand, a set of keys on the other. He wasn't very impressive looking: thin as a matchstick, he had a puny chin, his dark hairline was receding towards baldness, and he wore an old-fashioned looking pair of glasses.

He unslung the satchel as he came in, holding it by the handle. "Taylor, got off work early today. I brought you something to eat—"

He paused, finally noticed his surroundings. He took in Taylor's presence first, glancing at her for a fraction of a second, before he turned to look at me. He seemed bewildered, unsure what was going on. Then he squinted behind his glasses, examined me more closely.

After a few seconds of that, his eyes ballooned to comical proportions. The satchel and the plastic bag fell from his grip, letting what looked like a couple of sandwiches to splat against the floor. He paid no attention to them as he stared at me, mouth agape.

"What – what—" he spluttered helplessly.

Taylor traded a look with me, a resigned expression on her face. Then she turned to him.

"Dad… I have something to tell you."

* * *

 **Major thanks to HaltCPM for looking this over.**

 **Mirror, mirror, on the wall… In terms of current appearance, Emma looks somewhat similar to Feuerschwinge's human body from** _ **Shadowrun: Dragonfall**_ **.**

 **With the whole blood spurting bit, just past the elbow, the brachial artery splits off into the ulnar and radial arteries, hence all blood that spilled when Emma stabbed herself in the arm this chapter. Taylor's appearance from before the attack is drawn and adapted from Interlude 19 of** _ **Worm**_ **and her current appearance is drawn from 1.1. The arrangement of the kitchen in Taylor's house is drawn from 6.9. Danny's appearance is drawn from 2.1 and 11.1.**


	11. Ember 2-2

**Ember 2.2**

I had to give credit to Mr. Hebert—he reacted a lot more calmly than I expected him to. He didn't raise his voice, call the police, or do anything dramatic like that. He simply locked the door behind him and, when Taylor gestured him over, sat across from us at the table.

I let Taylor do most of the talking, to try to give this unbelievable situation some semblance of sense for him to process. She explained how she had come across me, how I had proven to her that I really was Emma, how I had told her things only I could have known, about the dress I was wearing, and how I could regenerate. Thankfully, she didn't tell him about my rather bloody demonstration of that last bit.

She even helped me show my power to him, though we used a kitchen knife as opposed to the kukri or kamas. She was the one that insisted on using the knife, however—I guess she was still worried that I might try to do something crazy again, like stabbing myself with it or opening up my arm like before. She had cut a faint slice against the back of my hand, only a small line of red to indicate the injury, and Mr. Hebert had watched with wide eyes as the cut sealed itself over.

He said nothing as Taylor continued to say her piece, only listening, though he kept a wary eye on me and the weapons on the table the whole time.

"So, let me make sure I'm understanding all this," Mr. Hebert said, after Taylor was done speaking. "You're actually Emma Barnes, the same Emma Barnes who was best friends with Taylor for the longest time, and last year, at the alley, you ended up…" He trailed off, looking over at Taylor.

"Triggering," she supplied helpfully.

"Right. You triggered and got powers—some kind of healing power that let you come back from the dead today, dug out of your own grave, and came here, nearly _nine months_ after the fact?"

Well, when you put it like that it did sound fairly ridiculous. I tried to think up an adequate answer, something to soothe his doubts. Unfortunately, nothing particularly brilliant came immediately to mind.

"Um, yes?" Good going, Emma—real eloquent.

He sighed, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. "I'm not sure what to make of all this." He put his glasses back on and gazed at me. "You talk like her, you look a lot like her—no, you look _exactly_ like she did on the day we buried her, down to the last detail. And I can believe that you're a parahuman too. That much is obvious, from what you showed me. But—" He broke off, hesitating, an apologetic look on his face.

"But, you're still not sure if I really _am_ her," I finished for him.

"It's… I've never heard of a parahuman that's come back from the dead," he said, scratching his head. "I'd like to believe you. I _want_ to believe you. It's—"

"She _is_ Emma, Dad," Taylor said. "Like I told you, she only knows things that Emma could have. And she has the dress that… that Mom bought for her. The same one she was buried in. How else would you explain all that if she _wasn't_ Emma?"

I felt a surge of gratitude towards Taylor for stepping up in my defense when she herself had been having the same doubts not even an hour ago.

"I know, Taylor," Mr. Hebert said. "I know. This is a little hard for me to take in. It's not every day that someone you thought was dead isn't." He looked over at Taylor. "You believe she's really Emma?"

"I do," Taylor replied without hesitation.

Taylor's dad inhaled deeply, nodding his head, coming to a decision. "Okay, okay. Amazing as it sounds, if Taylor believes you, then I do as well. I believe you… Emma."

I let loose a breath I hadn't even noticed I had been holding before. Taylor gave me a small, reassuring smile and I gave her one right back.

"That said, there's still the other issue," Mr. Hebert said, catching my attention. His eyes were fixed on the kukri and the kamas. "Taylor, you told me how you met Emma, how she was trying to find her parents and you," he said cautiously, "but, why are all these weapons on the table? And the _blood_?"

"Dad," Taylor said, glanced at me, her eyes filled with worry, "I'm not sure if it's the best time to get into all that. Emma's been through a lot and—"

"No," I interjected. "It's okay." I took a deep breath. "That's a fair question, Mr. Hebert."

"Emma," Taylor said, gripping my shoulder, her eyes shining with concern. "You don't have to put yourself through that again. Once was more than enough."

I gave her a shaky smile, laughing weakly. "Trust me. I'm not planning on it. I'm not going to say everything—only the gist of it. Your dad only wants to make sure that I'm not getting you into any trouble."

Mr. Hebert seemed uncomfortable when I said that last sentence, confirming my suspicion. Still, it was a reasonable request. And talking to Taylor about everything _had_ helped. I wasn't about to delve into the details of it like I had with Taylor, but the thought of giving voice to the basics didn't seem to bother me as much anymore. I had survived this far. I could afford to talk to my best friend's dad. I'd rip off the proverbial band-aid off and move on.

I paused, wondering how to explain the rest of what had happened without freaking him out, to distill what had been several hours of blood, sweat, and tears into a few pithy sentences. I rapped my fingers against the table cloth as I mulled that over. At the end of the day, I guess you couldn't beat the facts.

"When I got out of the cemetery, I was in a bad part of town, in the middle of the night. I ran into some people. They wanted to… take advantage of me," I said, a slight shudder running through me as I recalled what they had wanted to do to me.

I tapped a finger against the handle of the kukri. "I didn't let them." I coughed, before gathering myself and gesturing towards the kamas on the table. "I was still in a bad spot, so I ran into some more of them. They didn't like what I had done—they weren't going to let me go. We had a disagreement; I won, they lost." I wiped off a stray streak of blood along the edge of kama. "That's what I've been up to before I ran into Taylor. That's where the coat and the weapons came from. That's where all the blood came from."

He didn't say anything. I could see the unease in his eyes, as he understood all of the things I hadn't explicitly said, but I also could see the sadness and sympathy mixed in. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said kindly. "That must have been hard for you to have to go through all that, to have to make that kind of decision."

It would have been easy to agree with him, to cast myself into a more sympathetic light, to feed that lie, as comforting as it could have been. That, sure, I had killed thirteen people, but it wasn't like there was something fundamentally _wrong_ with me. I mean, what could you expect out of anyone else that was placed in circumstances as horrible as the ones I had faced?

And yet, for much as I would be lying to Taylor's dad, I would also be lying to myself. This entire mess began because I hadn't been strong enough to face the facts, to take reality for what it was, not that I wanted it to be.

"No," I corrected him. "It wasn't hard. Wasn't hard at all." I clenched my fists, thinking back on the fights I had been in. "You'd think it would be a hard thing to do, to kill someone, to watch them bleed out on the ground. But it wasn't."

Taylor's face was drawn up in alarm. "Emma, we already went over this." She looked over at her dad. "She's tired, we can—"

I raised a hand to stop her. I appreciated the sentiment, but this was something I had to do. "No, your dad needs to know what he's getting involved with—what _you're_ getting involved with. It wouldn't be fair to either of you elsewise."

I continued speaking before she had a chance to say anything else. "You'd think I'd feel bad, maybe guilty for what I've done, but I don't. If anything, I felt _relieved_. That it was them, not me."

"I think that's perfectly natural," Mr. Hebert said, his fingers entwined on the table cloth. "You had to what you did to survive. And when you did, you were grateful you were still alive. There's nothing wrong about that."

I shook my head. He wasn't getting it. "It's more than that. I've got… urges," I said. "When I said that killing wasn't hard, I meant it. But, that's not even the half of it. The _way_ I've killed people, what I've been willing to do to accomplish it, how easily it comes to me—it's like there's some part of myself that's more animal than human, that _becomes_ this thing that tries to destroy anything in its way, no matter the cost to me, let alone anyone else."

"I don't think it's my power, or at least, it's not _only_ my power that's behind these urges. Maybe it highlighted what was already inside me to begin with. For you guys, the… the attack at the alley happened months ago." I met Mr. Hebert's gaze steadily as I spoke. "For me, it's been only hours. And even back there, without powers, in that alley, I became something. Something ugly. Even after I got my powers, what's inside me now just feels like an extension of that same feeling." I jerked my head over at Taylor. "I've already told Taylor about it."

"These urges…" Taylor's dad said awkwardly, "can you control them? Stop yourself from acting on them?" His eyes flicked over towards Taylor, before snapping back to me. He had done it so quickly that I don't think Taylor had caught it.

There was a sinking feeling in my gut, as I understood what he had left unstated. He was asking if I was a danger to _Taylor_ , if he needed to do something to keep her safe from me, even if that meant turning me away. He was asking me if I could ever do to Taylor what I had done to Yan or the others.

I swallowed, wishing for any other conversation but this. "If you're asking me if I'm dangerous, Mr. Hebert, the answer to that is yes, I am. If you're asking if I could ever pose a threat to you or to Taylor, then I don't think so. Everything in me tells me that I can't even imagine doing something like that, that I'd rather die first."

"But?" Mr. Hebert said gently.

I had to force the words out, each one like a leaden stone against my chest. "But, I can't say in good faith that I know a hundred percent for sure."

Taylor shifted in her seat to face me, shocked into silence. It was difficult to say the last few bits, but somehow, I pushed through. "And if… if you feel like you need me to leave, so that Taylor doesn't get caught up in all this, I'll… I'll understand."

Taylor managed to recover her voice. "Emma!" Her face was drawn up in horror at the very idea of it and she turned to face her dad. "Dad, you _can't_ make Emma leave, no matter what she says." Her eyes narrowed. "She just came back from the _dead_ and you want to throw her out?"

Mr. Hebert met Taylor's glare calmly. "No one said anything about throwing anyone out, Taylor."

"You were thinking about it," she accused and he didn't reply.

For several seconds, no one said anything. Beneath the table, Taylor's hand grasped mine and she squeezed it in support. I gave her a grateful glance and squeezed back.

I could have been angry with him, I suppose, for even _considering_ the issue. I could have been furious out of my mind for him even suggesting that I could hurt Taylor—I could have screamed at him, cursed him out, or worse. I didn't do any of that—I didn't even feel any real anger towards him. It would just mean that his worries were right—that I couldn't be trusted. And as much as the possibility of rejection hurt me, scared me even, the idea of harming Taylor or her father frightened me more.

For as easy as it would have been to resent him for asking the question, for thinking the options over like he was, he was only looking out for his daughter. It was what any father would have done for their child—it's why _my_ dad would have done for me. And I couldn't blame him for that at all.

Mr. Hebert spoke slowly, as if carefully deciding on each word before saying it. "Emma, I've known you ever since you first met Taylor, years and years ago. You've always been Taylor's best friend and our families have shared dinners on more occasions than I can count. I've watched both of you grow up together and I've wanted nothing but the best for the two of you. But, when—"

His voice broke and he had to clear his throat before he continued, "When Annette died, I wasn't there for my daughter in the way I should have been." He gazed directly at Taylor. "I let you down that time, Taylor, and as much as I was hurting then, you were hurting just as bad, and I shouldn't have done that to you. Your mom wouldn't have wanted that to happen."

Taylor's eyes drooped with sadness. "Dad."

He turned to look at me. "And when I wasn't there for my daughter, _your_ mother was. At one point, I don't think Taylor was even eating for almost a week, and as ashamed as I am to say it, she had to turn to your mother to pick up where I failed." He smiled wryly, eyebrows scrunched up as if remembering something. "Your mother tore into me pretty badly—she made me feel like a schoolkid getting a stern talking to from their teacher. And I deserved it. Taylor had to go to your family for help, and they answered. _You_ and your family stepped up, until I was able to."

"I don't believe you're a monster, Emma," Taylor's dad said quietly. "I trust my daughter's judgment and she wouldn't have let you into the house if you weren't still the same Emma she had grown up with. And I don't think I could face myself if I took the kindness you and your family gave us in a time of need and repaid it by turning you away when you need help."

He reached across the table to place a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Taylor and I will help you get through this, Emma. If Annette were here instead of me, I know that's what she'd do as well."

I looked down, not wanting him to see the tears growing in my eyes. I wiped at my eyes, feeling as though a great weight had been lifted off of me. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you." Taylor wrapped an arm around my shoulder and squeezed, pulling me into a one-armed hug. I leaned into her embrace and after a moment, we broke apart, both of us a little teary-eyed.

Mr. Hebert looked between the two of us with some amusement. "Is there something you'd like first?"

I looked down at myself, at the bloodied, torn, dirt-stained dress under the red coat. With all the blood and grime I had been exposed to, I felt icky all over. "A shower and a change of clothes would be nice."

Mr. Hebert smiled softly. "I think that can be arranged."

* * *

I exited the bathroom, the bath towel wrapped tightly around me from the chest down. It had taken me longer than I had expected—after so many hours, dried splotches of blood and dirt had almost fused itself onto my skin and I really had to work to get it all off. I had to really scrub and scrub to get every last bit off. Still, it had been nice to be able to wash off like that—something that seemed almost a luxury given all of what I had gone through. Soaking under the fire hydrant earlier had helped, but it couldn't compare to a hot shower.

I headed towards Taylor's room, across the hall, opposite Mr. Hebert's. Taylor had told me that she'd give me some of her old clothes—it felt odd to think that Taylor had outgrown me to the point that it would have to be her _old_ clothes that would fit me—and she'd put my coat in the laundry for tomorrow. The dress was probably close to unrecoverable, unfortunately, though Mr. Hebert had said that he would see if it would be possible to fix it up somehow.

Unsurprisingly, the weapons had made him uncomfortable, but I had insisted on keeping them. Despite the things I had gone through to gain them, I wasn't eager to give those blades up anytime soon—they had helped me out in trying times. He ultimately agreed to storing them in one of the closets, out of sight on top of the high shelf.

The door to Taylor's bedroom was slightly ajar and I opened it, stepping through. "Taylor?" I called out, feeling a bit cheerier after that refreshing shower. "Taylor, have you—"

I stopped in my tracks, my eyes widening. Taylor pulled down her shirt as fast as she could, whirling around to face me, but she hadn't been fast enough. I had only glimpsed it for a fraction of a second, but that had been more enough to see it. It had looked like…

"Taylor _?_ " I said, still reeling from trying to process what I had seen. " _What was that_?"

Taylor smoothed out the sleeves of the shirt she had changed into, a solid matte gray T-shirt. "It's nothing." She gestured behind her towards her bed, where a T-shirt, pajamas, and some underwear were neatly arranged. "Anyway, I got you the clothes you wanted. I'll just let you—"

"Don't change the subject," I said sharply, shutting the door behind me. I stepped towards her and she backed away from me, stumbling on the bed behind her and almost rattling the nearby bookshelf. "Taylor, let me see—" I got on the bed myself, pushing her beneath me, crumpling the pajamas beside her.

"Emma, it's really not a big deal," she protested, though she didn't resist any further when I grabbed ahold of the bottom of her shirt and carefully lifted it up.

Ugly hues of blue and dark purple greeted me, a medley of discolored streaks and splotches that had rested along the left side of her body, where her lower ribs would be. The bruises wrapped around, starting from the sides and ending towards her back. I pressed against one of the darker spots and Taylor couldn't avoid flinching against me, letting out a brief hiss of pain. I rubbed lightly against the area, which felt swollen and tender. Paler, faded bruises were dotted around her stomach and beneath her bra as well, remnants of some older injuries.

Thankfully, she didn't seem to have any difficulty breathing and I hadn't noticed her having any issues moving around earlier. If she had, then that would have been good reason to think that her ribs were fractured. Melody had been no doctor, but she had known that broken ribs were no joke—depending on how bad, they could easily be life-threatening if they punctured the lung.

I let loose a sigh of relief, that it wasn't the worst case scenario, and pulled her shirt back down. The relief quickly gave way to dismay. "My God, Taylor," I said, aghast as I got off of her, shifting around to a space beside her on the twin-size bed. "Not a big deal? There's more bruise here than skin on you! What the hell happened?"

"I took a bad fall the other day." The words came out in a rush, as if she couldn't get them out fast enough. Her head was turned away from me, her long, dark hair concealing her face. "I was running and—"

"Taylor!" I took a breath, forcing myself to lower my voice. "You don't get bruises like that from just taking a _spill_." I pointed a finger towards her chest. "And you can't expect me to believe you have multiple 'accidents' like that all the time. Who did this to you?"

"No one did this to me, Emma," Taylor said patiently, sitting up and brushing away her hair from her face. She still didn't meet my eyes, however. "Really, it's not a big deal. It doesn't even hurt that much and it'll go away with some ice and hot packs later."

It was a painfully bald lie. With how bad the bruises around her ribs looked, I knew that those couldn't be old injuries. They were too fresh for that and she had been hiding them under her clothes the whole time. And she had to have been in pain every time we had hugged today—which had been a lot. I felt a surge of guilt at that: I had been hurting Taylor this whole time and I hadn't even noticed it.

And given how there were faded bruises alongside the new ones, whatever or whoever was affecting her had been doing so more than once. This wasn't some one-off incident. The thought of that sent a spike of anger through my gut and I had to calm myself at the thought of Taylor being harmed like that over time.

Was someone abusing her? For the tiniest fraction of an instant, I thought of Mr. Hebert before I immediately dismissed that. The very concept of it was ridiculous. I couldn't even imagine Mr. Hebert being violent or abusive to anyone, especially not Taylor. Was it trouble at school then, some people she had crossed and gotten on the wrong side of?

I raised Taylor's chin, making her meet my eyes. She looked tense, her shoulders shrunk on herself. I hesitated, before asking, "Taylor, is someone hurting you? Bullying you?"

There was a flash of _something_ through her dark eyes when I asked that, but it passed too quickly for me to track. She averted her gaze, turned her eyes away from mine. "Emma, it's nothing. Really."

Still, she kept on avoiding the question. I didn't understand why she was so reluctant to say anything. Something told me that not even Mr. Hebert had an idea of what had happened to Taylor. Was she afraid to appear weak in front of me, some sort of attempt on her part to project strength?

That didn't make much sense either. Before, Taylor and I had been as open as we could be to each other, sharing our hopes, dreams, and fears. She had even confided in me some of her deepest held worries, as we had shared on that bridge after her mom died. I had to reach out to that part of her somehow, to make her see that she had no reason to hide herself away from me.

"Taylor," I said softly, "you know you can tell me anything, right? If you're worried about your dad knowing, I promise I won't tell him. You can trust me. We… we used to talk to each other all the time."

A small shudder ran through her body at that. She met my eyes this time, but there was a distant quality to hers, almost an emptiness in those dark pools. "Emma, I really am okay. There's nothing to worry about and it's nothing I can't handle."

I stared at her, utterly confused. Why was she deflecting like this? Taylor was all but pleading with me not to press her on this, her body language speaking volumes despite what her words belied. With the way she hadn't met my eyes before, the way she held herself, she seemed almost _afraid_ of me pursuing any questions along this direction.

But, why would she refuse so hard to even acknowledge that she was having problems, that someone was hurting her? It was almost as if she was _protecting_ someone, which made no sense. Maybe it was something more basic, some deeper kind of shame. Was she involved in something? Had she fallen in with the wrong crowd somehow?

"It's really nothing, Emma," Taylor repeated. She gave me a wan smile. "Come on, today's about you, not me. Don't worry about me—let me worry about you. I'd feel silly thinking these little bumps are anything to worry about, especially with what you've gone through."

I stiffened, a brief memory of the alley coming back to me: the gleam of the knife, the thugs holding me down, Lao pocketing my—

It passed quickly, but Taylor had caught it. Her eyebrows creased in concern and her face fell.

"Oh, Emma, I'm so sorry." She looked distraught, almost alarmingly so as she wrung her hands. "I shouldn't have—"

I waved a hand to cut her off. I didn't want her to become as upset as she had when we had talked earlier, when I had explained everything to her. "No, it's alright, it's alright. It's not as bad—"

I stopped speaking, an idea coming to me. I was downplaying my own issues so as to not worry Taylor, to not upset her. Was Taylor doing something similar? That she could be deflecting away from her own problems so as to shield me from them as I had just tried with her?

Maybe she didn't want me to worry about her. It wasn't as simple as merely fear of appearing weak or that she was protecting someone else—though it could be that too. No, she had been trying to protect _me_. The more I reflected on that theory, the more sense it made. Throughout the conversation with her dad, even as reasonable as some of the questions he had raised had been, and despite my own willingness to discuss them, she had been almost afraid for me. She had been willing to stand against her father in my support and as much as I loved her for it, I wondered about it all the same.

Even though there was obviously _something_ seriously going wrong in her life right now, she was still trying to protect me somehow from it, to keep me from getting involved in her own troubles, to keep me safe. She was more distressed at the thought of _me_ being distressed than her own predicament. She'd rather take her lumps than worry me—or her father—even when they had gotten as bad as what she faced now.

"Taylor," I said carefully, "is there something else going on here? You know I can take care of myself, right?"

"I know," she replied, still seeming uneasy. "I just didn't want to make you upset."

"Come on." I gave her a weak grin. "I'm made of tougher stuff than that now. You don't have to worry about upsetting me. You haven't done anything wrong, Taylor."

At that, Taylor's body trembled next to mine, and I leaned back, surprised. She hung her head, eyes downcast, and the guilt practically wafted off of her like smoke. "I didn't want to let you down again," she whispered.

Again? What did she mean by… oh. Oh, _Taylor_.

"Is this about the phone call?" After a moment, she gave a minute nod. My shoulders slumped—I knew she had been troubled when I had talked about how I had hung up on her just before the attack, but I didn't realize that it was such a big issue for her. But, as I thought about it, I wanted to kick myself for not considering it earlier. Of course, it would have affected her—to be the very last person to talk to your best friend, having no idea what happened when they hung suddenly, and then hearing later on that they died right after the call ended?

That would mess with anyone's head.

I put an arm at her back and rubbed in slow, circular motions. "Taylor, you know there was nothing you could have done, right? There was no way to know. Taylor, you don't bear any blame for what happened to me."

"Yes." She cleared her throat before nodding sharply. "Yes, I… I know that." Most people would have been satisfied with that answer. The words and perhaps even the body language fit. But, they would have been fooled just as much as Taylor was trying to fool herself right now: her eyes, the way her lip quivered—I knew she didn't really mean it, even if she was trying to convince herself of it.

She had been talking to me only seconds before the attack, before I had hung up on her. What had happened to me couldn't possibly be considered her fault. Unfortunately, the heart isn't always logical like that.

Had she been torturing herself with this for the last nine months? The feeling must have festered inside of her, eaten at her. Maybe it wasn't always out there at the forefront of her mind, but it was present on some level. And when I had come back, even as glad as she was to see me again, my returned presence must have made all of that buried guilt spring back up to the surface.

I was at a loss for words. This wasn't something I could fix with a few one-liners lifted off of a Hallmark card. I could tell Taylor a thousand times that she wasn't at fault, and she'd agree a thousand times without really meaning it. Still, I had to do _something_ for her. Taylor had listened to me, had been there for me, when I had been giving voice to my demons earlier. And what kind of friend would I be if I didn't return the favor?

An idea struck me. Trite and predictable perhaps—but those ideas tended to work all the same. I patted Taylor's back. "All this gloom and doom business is depressing. Taylor, why don't we go do something fun instead?"

"What?" I almost winced at how flat and dull her tone was.

"Well," I said slyly, stretching out the L, "I seem to remember that we never got around to that Star Wars marathon you always wanted to do. You insisted on us doing that at one point, you remember?"

Taylor stirred a little at that and a faint smile came to her lips. "And I remember that you weren't interested in going through seven hours of watching 'space wizards and bad CGI,' as you put it."

"Hey," I said, injecting some more cheer into my voice, "you did always say I was missing out. And there's no time like the present, right?"

She nodded sluggishly. "I suppose."

"Great!" I enthused, getting off the bed. "We'll get your dad and make an event of it—"

I flailed about, missing the towel by inches. With all of the shifting and moving about I had done on the bed, it had come loose and popped free. Mortified, I grabbed the towel off the ground and tried my best to recover my dignity. Unfortunately, that still meant a couple of seconds of going _au naturel_ and I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.

"Uh, give me a moment first?"

Taylor just laughed and laughed.

* * *

"Oh, come on!" I groaned, waving a hand towards the television screen indignantly. "They're seriously using _teddy bears_ in this movie?"

"You're not alone in not being a fan of the Ewoks," Mr. Hebert said, handing a bowl of fresh, buttered popcorn to Taylor. She placed it on the table in front of us and I could see steam rising off of the surface.

She tossed some popcorn in her mouth, before pushing the bowl over towards me. "Don't worry—they don't take up too much screen time. At least it's not as bad as what they tried doing in the prequels."

"Or the Holiday Special," Taylor's dad commented, taking a seat next to her on the couch and putting an arm around her shoulder.

Taylor closed her eyes, shivering dramatically against me. "We don't talk about that one, Dad."

I giggled behind my hand, amused at Taylor's antics. "Maybe we'll watch that one after this then," I teased and she lightly swatted my shoulder in response.

We were well into _Return of the Jedi_ at this point, having blitzed through the first two films earlier, though we had taken breaks in between and we had to stop at one point to eat dinner—some leftover porkchops with vegetables Taylor had made last night. I had seen _A New Hope_ in the past with Dad, and only vaguely remembered it, being six or seven at the time. I had never bothered to return to the series when I was older. Sci-fi was more Taylor's speed anyway and when she had learned last year (well, two years ago now) that I had never seen the "best, awesomest movie series out there"—her exact words—she had harangued me on and off on much I had been missing out.

Cultural osmosis had ensured that I knew enough of the highlights of the series—Vader being Luke's father was no surprise to me by now—but "knowing" and seeing were two very different things. Now that I had a chance to watch it, I had to say that it wasn't bad. Okay, that wasn't fair—it was actually pretty good. Sure, I complained when those stormtroopers couldn't hit Luke or Han even once and I told Taylor how the lightsaber fight in _A New Hope_ was kind of lame, but the moment I heard Obi-Wan reach out to tell Luke to "use the Force," I knew right there and then that I was hooked.

I had gotten a chill down my neck when Yoda lifted the X-Wing, I had watched anxiously as Han Solo had been frozen in carbonite, and I had been captivated by the brutal duel between Vader and Luke at the end of the second film. I had felt happy for Leia and Han when she freed him from his imprisonment, had been saddened by the death of Yoda, and I had even been surprised to learn that Leia was Luke's sister. I hadn't known that last bit before.

Ewoks aside, I watched the rest of _Return of the Jedi_ with Taylor and Mr. Hebert without complaint and during the final showdown with Vader, Luke, and the Emperor, I had been rooted to the edge of my seat, not even touching the popcorn. By the time the credits were rolling, the John Williams score swelling in the background, I just felt empty—the kind of hollowness you get when you finish a good book or TV show, when you have to say goodbye to those characters for good.

Looking it superficially, you could consider it a movie just about space wizards, but it was honestly much more than that. It told a classic tale about good versus evil, love and loss, the hero's journey, redemption and sacrifice, and more. It was the kind of movie series that stuck with you for a while, the sort you would keep turning over in your mind for days or weeks to come.

Also, Mark Hamill was kind of cute.

It had been just past midnight by the time we were done and Taylor was clearly wiped out by the end of it. She had started yawning towards the middle of _Return of the Jedi_ and had only grown progressively tired from there. Mr. Hebert and I helped her ascend the stairs to his room, where the two of flopped onto Mr. Hebert's bed. Taylor's room had only a twin-size bed—not nearly enough room for both of us—so for now, we'd be sleeping on the bed he and Taylor's mom used to share.

Taylor clung to me sleepily as I helped her into bed, saying something under her breath. We were already in pajamas, so neither of us needed to change. By the time I pulled the blanket up over both of us, she was out like a light. I just sank back into my pillow, turning around to get comfortable in the bed, Taylor's back against mine.

Spending time with Taylor all day had been… nice. Familiar.

It reminded me of all the times we had spent together, where we could entertain ourselves with anything and everything, content to just enjoy each other's company, and I smiled just thinking about the evening again. Just as much as tonight had helped Taylor to get her mind off of all the guilt and gloom, it had helped _me_ just as well: to be able to relax and not worry about the future with everything different now, to not have to wrack my brains on what I should do.

She had been so down earlier and I was glad to see her loosen up as more and more time passed throughout the marathon. By the end of it, she was clearly in a good mood, even if she hadn't laughed or smiled as much as I had liked or even as much as I remembered she would in the past.

Still, as fun as tonight had been, I couldn't stop thinking about those bruises I had seen beneath Taylor's shirt. My thoughts kept returning to that disturbing sight—the pattern of blue and black, the faded bruises above and more. And yet what alarmed just as much, if not more, was Taylor's insistence on not telling me anything about it. I didn't know if I could get her to open up to me about what had happened, but I'd have to keep an eye on her. I wouldn't let her come to harm again, even if she wouldn't tell me what the problem was.

If I ever came across the person who had done that to Taylor… I'm not sure if I could have contained myself from hurting them. Hell, who was I kidding? With what I had already done earlier, I'd be hard pressed not to escalate to outright murder if the opportunity arose and I had a feeling that it wouldn't be pretty once I was done with them. All I'd need was the kukri and a few seconds. It wouldn't be that hard, especially compared to the shit I had survived thus far.

But, I couldn't do anything about it now and as much as the thought of ending whoever was behind Taylor's injuries held a dark appeal, there wasn't much point in fantasizing about it now. For now, I'd just get some rest and worry about it again tomorrow. I closed my eyes, focusing on my breathing, trying to catch some shut-eye.

I'm not sure how much time passed as I laid there, the silence interrupted only by Taylor's snoring, but I just wasn't getting tired. In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn't been tired ever since I had to dig out of my own grave. I knew that physical exertion couldn't wear me out; it was what had allowed me to claw through hundreds of pounds of dirt, to go through fight after fight, and I could maintain a full running sprint indefinitely. But, did that mean that I couldn't get tired _period_ , that even sleep would be denied to me?

I gave it some more time, the minutes slipping away, before I admitted defeat. I slowly moved the blanket off of me, before I sat up. Moving as silently as I could so as to not wake Taylor, I got off the bed and headed over to Taylor's side. For a few moments, I just watched her sleep—she was turned over on her side, one arm under her head and the other clutching her pillow, her chest steadily rising and falling with each breath. Even though she was taller than me now, perhaps even stronger too, she looked _so_ small lying like this, so vulnerable.

I gently tucked the covers around her shoulders some more. "Sweet dreams, Taylor," I whispered, exiting the room and quietly closing the door behind me.

Darkness greeted me and I could barely even see my hand in front of my face. Well, there was a remedy for that. I took ahold of the vibrating pulse beneath my neck and forced it outward, a burst of subsonic noise "illuminating" the area around me into a comprehensible snapshot of my surroundings.

I grinned in the dark—powers did have their perks. Heading down the stairs, using Cricket's power to avoid falling over myself, I was surprised to see that a light was still on, from the kitchen area it seemed like.

Mr. Hebert was sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of jam and toast in front of him along with a jug of milk and some glasses. His eyes flicked towards me in surprise, as I came into the room.

"Emma? You're still up?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling a bit embarrassed at being caught out by him. "Do you mind if I…" I gestured towards the seat across from him.

"Go ahead. Do you want anything?"

"Just some milk, if you'd please."

I took the milk he poured for me as I sat down, thanking him. He watched me curiously, taking a sip of his own milk.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Actually, I don't think I'm capable of it anymore," I confessed. "I don't feel tired at all even though I've been up for a while now."

Mr. Hebert's eyebrows rose. "Is that another part of your—"

"Powers? I think so."

"A lot of people would be happy to have something like that," he said, wiping away some stray breadcrumbs off of his mouth with a napkin. "You'd have a lot more time to be productive."

I shrugged. "Right now, I'd settle just to give my mind a chance to stop working all the time. I'd like to slow down and just get a chance to relax. What about you? I thought you and Taylor usually woke up early."

"We do, but I was feeling restless tonight. It's been an unusual day."

I gulped down another shot of milk. "Yeah, I can't argue with that," I said, my lips curving upward as I thought about how the evening had gone. "Still, it had a pretty good ending."

"Yes, today was a good day," Mr. Hebert agreed, setting aside his milk. "I don't think I've seen Taylor as happy or lively as she was tonight for a while yet."

"That's good to hear—" I paused, thinking over his statement again. He considered today a _good_ day for her, an exceptional day even? Sure, she had cheered up some by the end, but even then, she had been virtually a wallflower compared to the Taylor from before. If today had been one of her good days, what did that suggest about all the other ones?

Taylor's dad was still speaking, not having noticed my sudden silence. "…remember when you would come over for dinner and the slumber parties after. Taylor was so hyper back then." He was looking up towards the ceiling, his eyes unfocused in thought. "There was that one time you two woke me up in the middle of the night, blasting music so loud that the neighbors had almost called the police." He smiled fondly. "That had been an awkward conversation in the morning."

He reminisced some more as I listened, but I wasn't paying attention to what he said so much so as what he _didn't_ say. He kept talking about how happy Taylor had been before with the two of us, back in the past, not how she was _now_. Unease wound itself inside me, as I thought about the implications of what he wasn't saying, what he had left unstated.

They weren't pleasant, not in the slightest.

Even now, it had seemed so odd for Taylor to be so _quiet_ earlier, even if she had perked up some by the night's end. Before, she'd talk about old Star Trek episodes her dad had gotten her hooked on, the latest gossip on Alexandria—anything and everything we wanted to talk about, no boundaries or limits. Taylor had a wealth of energy for as long as I could remember, a vitality and vigor that I could barely keep up with. And as annoying as it could be at times, it was the best part of her as well, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything else.

Sure, things hadn't been easy after her mom passed away. She didn't smile or laugh as often and when she had, I had seen the pain lurking beneath the surface. Conversations would sometimes end abruptly and our regular outings became more awkward, sometimes they even felt wasted. But for all that, Taylor had put on a brave front, doing the best she could under the circumstances.

"…nice that the two of us were able to spend time together again—and you facilitated that," Mr. Hebert said, drawing me out of my thoughts. He reached across, patted my hand on the table. "Taylor's missed you for a while. I know that you've gone through a lot, but I'm glad the two of you are together after all this time. I'm happy that she has a friend again."

I don't think it was Mr. Hebert's intention, but with every word he spoke, every part he left _unsaid_ , he only added another stroke to the disturbing picture he was painting of Taylor.

Isolated. Distant. Unhappy. Withdrawn. Friendless.

The last time we had talked on the phone, right before the… the attack, Taylor had seemed like she was going back to her old self in full force—becoming once more the same Taylor who could easily fill in for both participants in a conversation, who'd drive you mad one minute and bring a smile to your face the next, the same Taylor I had known and loved for the longest time.

And now, today, she was instead this reserved, morose person who dressed differently, talked differently, even _walked_ differently. Her tone, her affect, all that and more had changed: she sounded more solemn now, less vibrant, almost nothing like the fun-loving girl that she had started to grow back into. Taylor hadn't been this bad even after her mom died.

Today had been one of her best days? What the hell did a _bad_ day look like then?

Worst of all, there were those bruises to consider—the injuries she hadn't told her dad about and the same ones she had refused to explain to me, evidence that someone or something was hurting her and regularly too.

What happened to you, Taylor?

"Are you alright?" Mr. Hebert said, examining me closely. He smiled lightly. "I didn't bore you to sleep, did I?"

"No, no, I'm fine," I said, forcing myself to chuckle. "I'm just happy to be here as a friend for her too. I was just wondering…" I bit my lip. How would I even approach this land-mine of an issue? Whatever was behind Taylor's troubles wasn't happening here—that much was obvious. The most logical place it could come from would be…

"Taylor goes to Winslow High, right?"

He nodded. "She got out of school for the summer just a few days ago, actually, before the weekend."

That fit the timeline on the injuries I had seen. "She did well in her freshman year, I'm guessing?" I grinned, thinking about all the times Taylor and I had studied together. "She was always one to have her head in a book."

He leaned back in his chair, smiling sadly. "She takes after her mother in that way. Yes, she did quite well, all things considered. She's always been a smart girl. We even thought of having her skip a grade during middle school."

I hadn't heard Taylor mention anything about that before. "Why didn't she?"

Taylor's dad looked a little embarrassed, scratching his head, his eyes downcast. "Well, I convinced her mother that she'd be happier staying with her own age group, being able to go high school with her best friend."

I was about to take another sip of milk when I heard what he said last. I froze, the words sinking in. Going to high school with her best friend? That… was me. And, it hadn't happened for obvious reasons. Just that sentence alone put into perspective what I had missed, how things had changed.

If not for the… alley, I'd be sitting here a different person: I'd have passed the ninth grade alongside Taylor, entering summer vacation and counting the days off until our sophomore year. We'd trade stories on cute boys we had our eyes on, be relieved that we had survived algebra, and spend our days soaking in the sun and taking in the waves. My family would still be here, in Brockton Bay, and today would have been a day like another: a sleepover at Taylor's house, the most ordinary thing in the world.

A different choice, a different path could have led to that. If Dad had gone on a different street, or if I had just stayed in that day… But, what could have happened wasn't what had happened. I couldn't turn back the clock, I couldn't gain back _time_.

"Emma?"

I looked up to see Mr. Hebert looking at me in concern, his face drawn up in a combination of apology and guilt.

"I'm sorry, Emma, I didn't mean to bring up—"

"It's—" I coughed, clearing my throat. Tough it out, Emma—you're here for Taylor, not to feel sorry for yourself again. "It's alright."

He looked dubious so I forced a smile onto my face. "Really, it's no big deal."

"So, has Taylor been doing anything else besides being a genius and all?" I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track, see if I could get further insight into Taylor. "I noticed she looks a lot fitter now. Did she join a sports team or something?"

"No, no," Mr. Hebert said, looking vaguely amused at the idea. "She hasn't joined any teams. She's just become really dedicated to her fitness for some time now. I'd come home to see her doing pull-ups in the living room and then she'd go and do push-ups up in her room. And she insists on doing a morning run every single day."

I raised an eyebrow. "Even the weekends?"

Mr. Hebert nodded absentmindedly, picking up the milk jug and beginning to refill his glass. "Yes, she's become almost religious about her routine these days. She'll wake up six-thirty in the morning sharp, every day without fail, to do her run. The only exception was when she was in the hospital after the incident at school—"

He paled, as if realizing he had said too much by mistake. His hand slipped on the jug and a few stray globules of milk splattered against the table cloth before he recovered.

That was not a good sign.

Taylor had been _hospitalized_? From something that had happened at her school?

The images of the bruises came back to me, as if taunting me and I clenched my fists beneath the table. Taylor's dad had gotten up to retrieve some paper towels from the nearby kitchen counter and he was wiping down the mess he had made, not speaking, not looking at me. He sat down, not touching his glass, a pensive look on his face, his eyes staring past me.

I tried thinking of a half-dozen ways of posing the question, each one more convoluted than the last. In the end, simplicity won out. "Mr. Hebert, is Taylor having problems at school?"

He didn't reply.

"Mr. Hebert," I continued, "I can't just ignore it if something's going on with Taylor. I mean… you just told me that she was hospitalized!"

He sighed, his shoulders slumping in resignation as he nodded. "… Yes. Yes, she's been having issues at school." His head drooped and he ran a hand through his thinning hair. "She's been having trouble for some time. She hasn't… she hasn't been herself for a while."

"Do you know what they are? When they started?"

He shrugged, his face going through a combination of bewilderment, and helplessness. "She doesn't like talking about it. She doesn't like _me_ asking her about it."

Given how much she had resisted my attempts at questioning her earlier, I believed him. But, still…

"You don't have _any_ idea?"

"I think she's being bullied," he said, closing his eyes in frustration. "I didn't even know she was dealing with anything like that in school until the incident happened."

Back to that "incident" again. "The one that she had to go to the hospital for?"

I was startled to see his face reddening with what looked like intense rage, a fury comparable with what _I_ had displayed before, with all the shit I had dealt with. It passed almost instantly, but it had surprised me all the same. Mr. Hebert was the most mellow, low-key person I had ever known. I hadn't even thought it was possible for him to be angry, let alone to this extent.

"Yes," he said finally. From the way he said it, I knew that he wasn't eager to offer any further information.

I thought about pressing him further on it, but I hesitated. I didn't want to scare him off this topic completely and besides… I almost felt as if I would be betraying Taylor's trust if I had. She hadn't even told her father about the bruises and I had promised, even as sorely tempted as I was now, to not say anything about them to Mr. Hebert. She wouldn't appreciate it if I interrogated her dad about the details on her troubles—going behind her back rather than facing her directly.

That said, the direct approach hadn't been much help. But neither would pushing Mr. Hebert here do much good either. There was every likelihood he'd clam up just as quickly as Taylor had.

I swallowed my frustration and nodded, accepting the inadequate reply for what it was. "Has… has she been getting better at all? Is she still being bullied?"

Taylor's dad slowly shook his head. "I'm not sure. She's still having some difficulties at school, but there hasn't been anything else like the incident, as far as I know."

As far as Taylor tells you, I wanted to amend. I didn't say that out loud however—no doubt he was intimately aware of the asymmetry in knowledge. Taylor could be so goddamn _stubborn_ sometimes.

He put a hand to his chin, looking thoughtful. "She has seemed a bit better recently. I think she might have made a friend, a girl in her class I believe."

I wasn't sure how to react to that. "Really? You've talked to her?"

"No, I've never met her before," he replied, frowning. "Taylor's only mentioned her a couple of times before, but she's never brought her around." He shrugged. "I'm glad that she has someone at her school."

Mr. Hebert pursed his lips. "Though I wonder if she's a good role model for Taylor at times."

"Why's that?"

"Taylor's seemed less… restrained ever since she's met this girl. Angrier, more prone to lashing out. The school's called me before for disciplinary concerns a few times," he said, his forehead wrinkled with worry. "I just don't understand why Taylor never seems to bring her over."

I felt disquieted at the idea of Taylor's mystery "friend." On the one hand, I had no doubt that friendship was helpful for Taylor's well-being. But, on the other, with everything that Taylor's dad was saying, with the way Taylor's situation was, something about this "friend" just rubbed me the wrong way.

Taylor seemed so reluctant to even introduce her new friend to her dad and I couldn't pin down an innocent-sounding reason why. I thought about those bruises beneath Taylor's shirt again—how recent they had been, how _regular_ the abuse was. There was no reason to link that to her friend, but I just couldn't shake the unease in my gut.

I couldn't pretend to be entirely unbiased here, however. While I was glad that Taylor had found some companionship, some means of grasping onto stability, I couldn't shake the fear that by doing so, she was _replacing_ me. Maybe I was just jealous—already making a judgment before I had the facts.

And yet, I still had a bad feeling about all this.

Mr. Hebert rubbed at his eyes, blinking blearily. "It's past two," he said, looking over my shoulder at the clock on the wall behind me. He got off of his chair, stretching his arms out as he yawned. "I think it's well past time that I turned in for the night."

"Thank you for telling me what you know, Mr. Hebert," I said quietly, still digesting all the information I learned, going over each disturbing facet in my mind.

Mr. Hebert opened his mouth as if to say something, but wavered, closing it again. Then he smiled tiredly at me. "I'm glad you're back, Emma. I know Taylor's glad to have her best friend back too."

I returned the smile. "I know."

He was about to leave through the kitchen room door when I realized that I had forgotten something.

"By the way, what was the name of Taylor's friend?"

He paused at the threshold. "Taylor's only told me her name once before but it's…" He cocked his head, thinking it over.

"Sophia," he said finally. "Her name's Sophia."

* * *

 **Major thanks to HaltCPM and NuScorpii (from DLP) for looking this over. The part about Emma's mom, Zoe, picking up the slack where Danny faltered is canonical, as seen in** _ **Worm**_ **, 2.4. The characterization of Taylor from before is partly drawn from Interlude 19. The part about Taylor being able to skip a grade is from 6.9. Aspects of Danny's characterization here are drawn from Interlude 1. Also, to my surprise,** _ **Quicken**_ **now apparently has a TV Tropes page! (tvtropes DOT org SLASH pmwiki SLASH pmwiki DOT php SLASH Fanfic SLASH Quicken) Thanks to whoever put that out there, much appreciated!**


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